>FASTA_28
Argentinian and Korean biotech; Lab-grown teeth, wood, and blood; The Chinese peptides black market; Persephone Biosciences; A new biotech unicorn; Google's A-Life; Does sex exist on Mars?
>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram! | Versión en Español
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1. Argentina builds with biology 🐎
Gabriel Vichera was doing his PhD on cloning, IVF, and genetic modification of bovines at the University of Buenos Aires when he saw a single polo mare clone be sold for nearly a million dollars at an auction, right there in the capital of polo: Argentina.
He set out to found Kheiron Biotech the next year and by 2017, before the first CRISPR babies were born in China, the team had created nine genetically modified horse embryos. Their initial backer, Daniel Sammartino, is the founder and CEO of Proinvesa, a group of biotechnology, pharma and veterinarian startups based in Argentina.
The horses they unveiled a few weeks ago were CRISPR’d to inhibit the myostatin gene and thus, have a better performance in polo. Today, the company sells horse clones at an average price of $40,000 USD per clone, apart from offering stem cell treatments and gene banking.
2. Enveda becomes a unicorn 🦄
Enveda has built the world’s largest library of plant-derived molecules linked to diseases, symptoms, and therapeutic potential. By combining mass spectrometry with proprietary LLMs, they can analyze tens of thousands of molecules at a time, instead of just one.
Their dermatitis and asthma candidate has passed phase 1 in clinical trials, and they have twelve other preclinical candidates for indications such as IBD and obesity. Their recent $150M USD Series D brings their total funding to $517M and gives them a unicorn status.
3. Cultivated wood 🪵
In 2024, New Dawn Bio grew wood directly from plant cells under controlled lab conditions, without growing a whole tree, at Wageningen University. This month, they secured a €1.4M Eurostars grant to advance their research at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology.
Plant cell culture follows similar principles of cultivated meat, except that culture reagents for plants are often much cheaper. By simply altering the growth media formulation, properties like the ratio of xylem to fibers could be controlled to make lighter wood, or even wood that is not found in nature at all.
The company has run experiments with six different species of trees and intends to grow into a B2B supplier for manufacturers of wooden products. When I asked about their differentiator against Foray Bioscience, cofounder and CEO Tom Clement shared that tissue formation from individual cells is where their value-add and IP is.
4. DonnaDAO 🦷
Enamel is the outermost layer that protects teeth. When it wears off, it makes the underlying dentin layer more visible, leading to yellow teeth 😬 — Luckily, biotech can really grow anything in a dish. Prima Donna by DonaDAO is the first-ever treatment to regenerate lost enamel by using stem cells.
The team of two stem cell scientists and an oral health scientist has grown ameloblasts and subodontoblasts from iPSCs, a method that they’ve patented. The DAO has raised 68.376 ETH (~$314k USD) and is now scaling up organoid production for testing in primates.
Ruohola-Baker, one of the scientists involved, envisions the ability to regrow entire teeth, similar to how sharks do. Just like plant cell culture, I see these tooth organoids becoming a platform that enables the development of other products, perhaps for cavities, gingivitis and other conditions.
5. Do you have a peptide guy? 🫣
As the FDA restricts access to popular peptides, Silicon Valley is stockpiling fridges with up to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of black market peptides sourced from China.
Leave GLP-1 for the basics — real ones get peptides for tendon and ligament healing, collagen and hair growth, immune support, anxiety reduction, stroke recovery, focus, and libido.
Of course, it is one thing to make a protein shake and another thing to self-administer a phase III drug. Peptide calculators have become popular among users, and Finnrick Analytics, a testing lab backed by Naval Ravikant, once found that 5/6 vials had zero product.
Culturally, I see this as the first step towards genetic enhancement in adults. Before then, there will be lots of consumer-facing peptide businesses to be started, way beyond weight loss. Let’s hope regulations don’t stop us from seizing this opportunity on this side of the world.
6. Korea’s biotech giants 🇰🇷
When it comes to biotech, one usually assumes we’re either talking about big European pharmas like Eli Lilly or younger startups like the above — Who would’ve thought that LG makes a lot more than washing machines, and that smartphones aren’t Samsung’s only business!
LG Chem, which has over 18 thousand employees worldwide and more than 50 patents, happens to have a Life Science company with 18 drug candidates, six of which are in phase II and phase III clinical trials. They’ve recently partnered with Acies Bio, the 20-year-old European CDMO, to develop sustainable biomanufacturing solutions.
Then, Samsung Biologics is a CDMO that offers late discovery, cell line development, and manufacturing solutions, as well as testing services for biopharmaceutical products. They just closed a $1.2B USD deal with an unnamed US pharmaceutical company. Their YoY revenue in Q2 was $936M USD.
7. DARPA’s bioengineered blood 🩸
The Biological Technologies Office at DARPA published a call to make “smart” red blood cells that enhance human performance in austere environments and maximize their survival. This may include improving thermal regulation and accelerating acclimation to high altitudes.
Safi Biotherapeutics and RedC Biotech are two biotech companies that are already producing lab-grown blood from stem cells. Before jumping into a new level of blood engineering, DARPA wants to make sure they can engineer hematopoietic stem cells and retain function in mature red blood cells.
Biopunk’s sponsor is a biotech startup in the defense space, so I do believe that these applications can advance biotech faster than others for the potential long term benefit of many patients. That still goes to say that neither AGI nor universal CRISPR will solve our human conflicts. At best, they will just join them.
8. Persephone Biosciences 🍼
During the Baby Biome study, Stephanie Culler and Stephen Van Dien analyzed the microbiomes of 412 US infants and found that 25% lack Bifidobacteria, which are among the first microbes to colonize the human gastrointestinal tract and have been associated with the development of the immune system.
To improve the nutrition of babies over the crucial First 1000 Days of life, the pair of chemical engineers cofounded Persephone (YC W18), a company that offers daily synbiotic for infants and toddlers that also contains human milk oligosaccharides and vitamin D, starting at $64.95 for a 30-day supply.
9. Google's A-Life 🦠
A-Life helps biomanufacturing companies move from lab to industry scale faster and more efficiently using proprietary AI. Relly Brandman, director of this program at Google X, said that they’ve been able to “discover 3-5x more cells” which are on average “50% better than discoveries made without [their] tools”.
Whatever that means, it looks like they’re announcing a potential new spinoff. If successful, I’d be curious to know what they did differently compared to Microsoft Station B, whose first papers date back to 2009 but stopped publishing in 2021 and has now been retired.
Poets
10. Does sex exist on Mars? 🏜️
1984 has been recently brought up on online videos that reference AI and social media companies as the “Big Brothers” used for massive civil surveillance, as well as the drivers of a “newspeak” which might only be a reflection of how our addictive technologies atrophy our brains.
In Orwell’s book, the nuclear family is also distorted such that children can accuse their parents of “thought-crime” to get them “vaporized” (cancelled, cough cough). However, not much has been said about “Anti-sex”.
The political party in 1984 arranges marriages such that couples have no desire towards each other. They reframe sex from a private act of love, to the duty of producing obedient citizens.
As I scroll past news about automated IVF factories, embryo selection services, GenZ’s poor sexual life, and declining fertility rates, I can’t help but think that biotech too is bringing us to a 1984 world, and there’s not much we can do about it.
