Posted on 03/17/2021 12:27:58 AM PDT by knighthawk
The director of research at a Massachusetts biotech firm has been accused searching online for deadly poisons and purchasing 800 castor bean seeds so he could extract the toxin ricin from them, federal prosecutors say.
Dr. Ishtiaq Ali Saaem, 37, was charged on Tuesday with obstruction of justice after he allegedly lied to FBI agents when they were investigating why he was trying to acquire the deadly toxin.
Authorities say Saaem had ordered 100 packets of castor beans, which each contained eight seeds, online.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
One bean can kill you but unless it is mashed up the seed coat might not break down in the gut enough for the toxin to be released.
Wonder what Massachussetts biotech firm it was that he worked at?
Also bought Lily of the valley.
From a year later...
The U.S. Department of Justice sentenced a former researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Broad Institute to three years of probation following a guilty plea to charges he obstructed a federal investigation into his efforts to acquire the deadly toxin ricin.
Ishtiaq Ali Saaem was charged by the Justice Department last year for lying to federal investigators about his 2015 attempts to acquire 100 castor bean packets in order to develop ricin, which is a poison used in bioterror attacks. Saaem received three years’ probation, including six months of home confinement. He has also been ordered to pay a $5,500 fine....
Former MIT rresearcher
...Although there was no evidence that Saaem tried to produce the poison for nefarious purposes, the Bangladesh-native who previously served as a director of research at Cambridge, Mass.-based Gen9, Inc., now part of Ginkgo Bioworks, told prosecutors that he had been influenced by the television show “Breaking Bad”. According to court documents, as a biomedical engineer, Saaem was interested in the process of developing the poison after the show’s main character explained the process in an episode. He came to the attention of authorities after acquiring 100 packets of castor beans. The poison can be extracted from the natural oils of the seeds. According to the Department of Justice, each of the packets contained eight seeds. Additionally, he ordered multiple Lilly of the Valley plants, from which another poison, convallatoxin, can be extracted. According to the federal government, Saaem’s Internet search history contained queries about tasteless poisons....
Lily of the valley plants contain convallatoxin. Never heard of it before.
Guy has a special needs kid, and he is looking for tasteless poisons. I wonder if he may have been depressed and had ideas about lifting the burden of taking care of the kid?
During questioning, Saaem told investigators he intended to plant the beans and the Lilies of the Valley around his apartment for decoration. He claimed he accidentally ordered 100 packets instead of one, and his interest in buying castor beans is related to an interest in gardening. He also made misleading statements about his knowledge of ricin.
Acquiring castor beans is not illegal, but large purchases such as Saaem’s 800 beans can trigger investigations. During his sentencing hearing, Saaem said he never made the poison, nor did he intend to harm anyone, the Boston Globe reported. He claimed that he was “scared and overwhelmed” when federal officers approached him about his 2015 purchases, which “led to my poor choice of not telling the truth.” His attorney argued that Saaem never possessed the poison and that his behavior was best described as “misplaced curiosity.” ...
The government initially sought a sentence of one year in federal prison, but the judge opted for probation since Saaem is the primary caregiver for his three-year-old son, who has significant medical conditions. The judge said he believed Saaem “is extremely remorseful for his conduct.”
“Dr. Ali Saaem showed callous disregard for public safety and federal authority,” United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins said in a statement. “This prosecution sends a clear message that the attempted procurement of deadly weapons or toxins will be taken as a direct threat against the safety and security of American communities. Thanks to the swift action by authorities, no one was harmed.”
Additional (from over a year ago)(probation):
Gen 9... interesting firm.
The Rise and Fall of Cambridge Biotech Startup Gen9
Published: Jan 26, 2017
https://www.biospace.com/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-cambridge-biotech-startup-gen9-/
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A $100 million partnership deal to acquire 300 million base pairs of DNA with Ginkgo Bioworks was the beginning of the end for Cambridge, Mass.-based Gen9.
Last week, Gingko Bioworks acquired Gen9 for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock options. The bulk of Gen9’s staff was laid off, with only 10 employees shifting over to Gingko Bioworks, the Boston Globe reported this morning. In a statement at the time of the acquisition, Ginkgo said Gen9’s operations and research and development teams would be joining the company.
The Globe chronicled the fall of Gen9, a company that developed synthetic DNA that was used from drug development, to beauty product development and possible energy use. The company was founded in 2009 and drew funding from a number of sources, including the Kraft Group, the investing arm of the family that owns the New England Patriots, the Globe said. Despite the funding and the massive contract with Gingko, Gen9 was unable keep up manufacturing demands. In its account, the Globe said Gen9 had problems acquiring the raw materials it needed to complete the orders. That inability to meet the demands of Gingko and other clients, which included university researchers, led to additional financial concerns at the privately-held company. Gen9 leadership explored raising additional funds through venture capitalists, but the money never came. In December, Gen9 initiated its first round of layoffs, the Globe said.
It was after that round of layoffs that Gen9 leadership entered into talks with Ginkgo about an acquisition—a deal which was finalized Jan. 20.
In a statement about the acquisition, Ginkgo said it would absorb “Gen9’s BioFab
manufacturing platform and sophisticated suite of proprietary technologies, software, and informatics tools, as well as Gen9’s extensive intellectual property portfolio of more than 125 patents and patents pending related to DNA synthesis and assembly technologies.” Gen9 technology producing long fragments of synthetic DNA, up to 10,000 base pairs. Ginkgo said those long-designed DNA sequences are crucial for the company’s pipeline of cultured ingredients including fragrances and flavors, cosmetics, and nutritional ingredients, as well as specialty enzymes and intermediate chemicals used in a number of industries. Ginkgo Bioworks delivers designer organisms for its customers, using engineered microbes to manufacture cultured ingredients such as flavors, fragrances, cosmetics and sweeteners.
In the Globe’s expose, several analysts said Gen9’s business model made it difficult to attain profitability. But Gen9’s loss is Ginkgo’s gain.
Ginkgo has seen strong growth over the past year. Part of what is fueling the growth at Ginkgo is the combined deals the company has made this year, including partnerships with companies like Cargill, to explore strain improvements that will optimize Cargill’s bioindustrial fermentations, and ADM, a provider of food ingredients, who teamed with Ginkgo to develop custom strains of microorganisms for cultured ingredients. Ginkgo also struck a deal with Amyrisis, Inc. to accelerate time to market for cultured ingredients in flavor and fragrance, cosmetics, and nutrition.
Is Ginkgo’s synthetic-biology story worth $15 billion?
Jason Kelly has promised a manufacturing revolution with DNA. Just don’t ask him to make any products.
By Antonio Regalado
August 24, 2021
The Boston genetic engineering company Ginkgo Bioworks and its CEO, Jason Kelly, have been spectacularly successful selling a story: that synthetic biology will transform the manufacture of physical products. What computers did for information, Kelly says, biology will do for the physical world. Instead of making a chemical from petroleum, why not have Ginkgo’s multi-floor “foundry” in Boston’s seaport design a yeast cell to manufacture it instead from a broth of sugar water?
I first saw Kelly, a boyish figure in a tight sport coat and sneakers, give his pitch a few years back. It was the same talk he’d been giving successfully in Silicon Valley for years. One slide featured a photo of an Apple computer, an iPhone, a camera, and a metal watch on a gray desk decorated with a potted plant and a black swivel lamp. “What’s the most complicated device on this table?” Kelly asked....
...Of course, it’s the house plant. The point is that biology can make just about anything. Think of its incredibly sophisticated miniature machines, like the swirling flagellum that helps a bacterium swim. In Ginkgo’s hands biology would become programmable, revolutionary, and insanely lucrative, just like those famous tech products in the slide. “This is a much more powerful manufacturing platform than any of those other things,” Kelly said....
...While Ginkgo’s work has not led to any blockbusters, and Kelly allows it’s “frustrating” that biotech takes so long, he says products from other customers are coming soon. The Cannabis company Cronos, based in Canada, says by the end of the year it will be selling intoxicating pineapple-flavored candy containing CBG, a molecular component of the marijuana flower; Ginkgo helped show it how to make the compound in yeast. A spinout from Ginkgo, called Motif FoodWorks, says it expects to have a synthetically produced meat flavor available this year as well.
More recently, Ginkgo has sought to play a bigger role in the manufacture of new biotech drugs, a more lucrative arena. For instance, it says it helped a research supply company called Aldevron improve the production of capping enzymes, which are used in the manufacture of mRNA vaccines. Those enzymes are in high demand because of the covid-19 crisis, and if the process is commercialized, they will represent the most important product Ginkgo has been involved with. That product could see several hundred million in annual sales, which Kelly says Ginkgo will collect part of as royalties.
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One problem some see is that making real money in industrial biology is notoriously difficult. Engineering a microbe that performs well in a laboratory reactor is just a first step. Often the organisms need to be further tweaked to grow and thrive under pressure in steel tanks before it’s possible to actually manufacture something. But the trickiest part is making bioproducts inexpensively enough to compete with existing chemical production.
“The biotech landscape is scattered with bodies of companies that couldn’t scale or didn’t think about the economics,” says Chris Guske, a chemical engineer who has worked on some of the world’s largest biorefining products. “Just because you have a bug that produces a gram per liter in a flask doesn’t mean you are ready to be commercial.”
John Melo, CEO of Amyris, another synthetic-biology company, says Ginkgo does not have expertise in large-scale production, and he thinks Kelly is “paranoid” that betting on products “equates to difficulty and failure.” Amyris itself almost collapsed after it failed in a plan to sell biofuels for transportation but is staging a turnaround by manufacturing and selling beauty ingredients and flavors. In Melo’s view, unless things are made with biology at large scales, the dream of renewable manufacturing won’t be any closer. “I think this notion of not being a product company misses the point,” he says. “How ...
...photograph showing a lab at Gingko Bioworks
Showcase lab: A promotional photo showing a view into one of Ginkgo Bioworks “foundries” in Boston, where it engineers microorganisms.
...
Another example of how Ginkgo has financed demand for its services was a collaboration it announced in June 2019: a ”transformational” project with a startup called Synlogic, which is engineering E. coli bacteria to treat serious metabolic disorders. In ongoing studies, patients are swallowing pills filled with germs that have been programmed to carry out helpful functions, like digesting certain excess amino acids, the cause of a disease called phenylketonuria. The deal was important because it signaled that Ginkgo could get involved in potentially profitable new drugs, not only industrial ingredients.
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