News Digest #229 – $85.4 m for Sutro, $23 m for Mammoth Biosciences, Peter Thiel + Wild Earth, CRISPR crops hurdles and space bioprinters (sponsored by the Open Philanthropy Project)

Hi all,I’m excited to be partnering with the Open Philanthropy Project at SynBioBeta this year to bring you the biosecurity and synthetic biology fellowship program. If you are a graduate student or early-to mid-career professional in synthetic biology or biosecurity then apply now to be a Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Conference Fellow at SynBioBeta 2018. Up to 30 fellows will be covered by the program which includes conference registration, travel, lodging, food, and transportation costs. We’re also including a special plenary session on this topic that will be chaired by Gigi Gronvall from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

This week, Ryan Bethencourt’s company Wild Earth, which is developing sustainable protein pet foods, closed a seed funding round with $450,000 investment from Peter Thiel and Founders Fund. Their first product, a koji-based dog treat with all ten essential amino acids dogs require, will be available in late summer. Ryan’s speaking at SynBioBeta and I hope he’ll be throwing the crowd these delicious dog treats and ringing Pavlov’s bell loudly!In other news, Mammoth Biosciences, the company behind the world’s first CRISPR-based disease detection platform, announced $23 million in funding to bring CRISPR out of the lab and into everyday life. Congrats to Biossance™, the clean beauty brand from Amyris, which is expanding into 668 more of Sephora stores across Americas region. Take it to the market, John!2018 is the year of cell-free bio, and Sutro Biopharma didn’t disappoint with their announced $85.4 million series E round to fund novel cancer treatments using a cell-free protein synthesis platform.Our latest speakers at SynBioBeta 2018 include Jake Beal from Raytheon BBN Technologies, who will be speaking about engineering biological regulatory devices and standards for representation of biological designs, Shahram Seyedin-Noor, the Founder of Civilization Ventures, who will be speaking about their fund focused on synthetic biology and health tech, and Liz Specht, Senior Scientist at GFI, who will speak about sustainable, plant-based meat R&D.

Next week, Will Canine will be discussing his vision for the future of lab automation, and how the OT-2 can automate hundreds of life science protocols and workflows: Register now for SynBioBetaLive with Opentrons.

Be there, or keep manually pipetting - the choice is yours.Regards,John

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