On the lab floor of Ginkgo Bioworks, bacteria takes different forms in a Petri dish and transforms into a whole host of things: rose oil, cannabinoids, antibiotics, lab-grown meat and most recently, probiotic medicines.
In a new partnership, Seaport District-based Ginkgo Bioworks which calls itself the "organism company," is teaming up with Cambridge-based therapeutics company Synlogic to develop drugs using Ginkgo's bacteria engineering platform to treat rare diseases.
Ginkgo will make an $80 million investment in Synlogic and will ultimately own 25 percent of the company; that includes more than six million shares of the company's stock for $9 per share (with additional pre-funded warrants to purchase up to more than 2.5 million shares of Synlogic common stock, also at $9).
Synlogic, which develops therapeutics focused on probiotics as drugs, will have access to Ginkgo's platform as a service contract to program nine new program cells over the next twelve months going towards drug development.
One of the nine programs is a treatment for a rare amino acid metabolism disorder called PKU. Those diagnosed with this rare genetic disease have an error in their genes that prevents the body from breaking down a molecule called phenylalanine, which plays a critical role in biosynthesis of other amino acids.
"We could genetically engineer a bacteria that produces the enzyme and it chews up the phenylalanine as a substitute for your body doing it," Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Jason Kelly said. "What's exciting is that you can genetically engineer bacteria to do all sorts of things. "It's essentially like a computer and you can code it to do whatever."
Another project under development is the creation of bacteria that can be injected into a tumor, which then signals the immune system to attack the tumor.
This isn't the first time the company has made headlines this year. In May, the company acquired Warp Drive Bio’s genome mining team to develop antibiotics for Roche, marking the company’s foray into therapeutics. And Kelly hinted that this may not be the last, with more such potential partnerships as the company gets into drug development and therapeutics.
