The Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology celebrated its official launch April 1, and it is already planning for growth.
The hub is a joint initiative of the Allen Institute, the University of Washington and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It currently has 15 staff members and 3,600 square feet at Dexter Yard in Seattle's Westlake area, but leaders aim to have up to 27 staff members and 12,000 square feet of space by the end of the year. Within five years, the staff could grow to around 50 people.
"This is like an AI moment but for biology," said Rui Costa, CEO of the Allen Institute. "We are especially well-positioned in Seattle to make advances."
The Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology is developing technology to monitor genomic changes in cells in real time, in turn showing cells' whole histories and the genetic causes of disease. According to the hub, this could change the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Costa said the idea is to develop tech that can read DNA. In an ideal world, clinicians could take patients' blood samples and instantly know their medical history, as well as predict potential illnesses.
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Other leaders with the hub include Jay Shendure, its lead scientific director. Shendure is also the scientific director at UW Medicine's Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine. He joined UW in 2007. Marion Pepper, co-director at the hub, is the chair of immunology at UW.
The hub's staff will be employed through UW and the Allen Institute but will work as designated hub employees, Costa said. He added that the organizations wanted to make the hub here because Seattle is a leader in this type of science, and the hub is hiring from universities, life science companies and tech, among other industries.
Shendure said the hub is committed to open science, and it could produce spinouts. Costa added that if someone wanted to start selling products based on the hub's science, the team would need to discuss how the money would work, but he said that would be a good problem to have down the road.
According to Shendure, this is a good time to find talent.
"Times when biotech is a little down is actually a great chance to suck up a lot of great people," Shendure said.
The Allen Institute supports bioscience and global research. It was founded in 2003 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister, Jody Allen. The institute has five departments: the Allen Institute for Cell Science, the Allen Institute for Immunology, the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, which launched in November 2021.
Costa, previously the CEO of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, replaced longtime Allen Institute CEO Allan Jones, who stepped down in December 2021.
CZI, meanwhile, was founded in 2015 by Facebook (now Meta Platforms) founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. In addition to work in science, CZI supports education and work in the community, such as housing affordability and economic inclusion.
Stephen Quake, head of science at CZI, said the collaborating organizations have a long-term commitment to the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology.
"You look at how long it takes a new therapeutic to get to the clinic from a fundamental scientific discovery, it's typically 30 years," Quake said. "This is an investment in what's going to be a really long journey."
