...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.
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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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