INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
MycoWorks | October 19, 2022
Biotechnology company MycoWorks announced today its newest investor GM Ventures, the investment arm of General Motors Co. and their long-term agreement to co-develop Fine Mycelium™ materials for potential use in a range of applications within automotive design. MycoWorks' collaboration with GM marks the exploration of its entry into one of the largest end-use markets for leather and demonstrates the significant opportunity to create more sustainable materials for the automotive space.
MycoWorks' breakthrough Fine Mycelium technology engineers mycelium, the infinitely renewable root structure of mushrooms, to craft a range of natural, customizable leather alternatives that match the performance of the highest quality animal leather with lower environmental impact. The company's platform has enabled a new class of premium, non-animal materials which could have the opportunity to support GM's continued progress toward its vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.
Animal-free and chrome-free, Fine Mycelium also has superior strength at low thicknesses, offering a compelling pathway to efficiency and weight reduction in car interiors while still meeting the most stringent performance, aesthetic, and environmental requirements of the automotive space.
"Working with General Motors to introduce Fine Mycelium to the automotive industry is an enormous step forward in the global new materials revolution. MycoWorks's collaboration with GM is a first for us outside of the fashion industry, demonstrating the enormous potential and applications for Fine Mycelium."
Matt Scullin, CEO of MycoWorks
"Our strategic investment in MycoWorks aims to advance the development of sustainable automotive materials," said Wade Sheffer, managing director of GM Ventures. "This collaboration will help facilitate R&D efforts and build more sustainable alternatives for our designers."
In August 2022, following an oversubscribed $125M Series C funding round, MycoWorks broke ground on its first full-scale production facility, which will enable initial mass-production volumes of several million square feet of Fine Mycelium materials per year, dramatically increase production and partnership capacity, and service Fine Mycelium to a wider range of industries and companies.
About MycoWorks
In 2013, co-founders Philip Ross and Sophia Wang formed MycoWorks, a San Francisco-based biomaterials company dedicated to bringing new mycelium materials to the world. MycoWorks' patented Fine Mycelium technology, an advanced manufacturing platform and breakthrough in materials science, engineers mycelium during growth to form proprietary, interlocking cellular structures for unparalleled strength and durability.
About General Motors
General Motors is a global company focused on advancing an all-electric future that is inclusive and accessible to all. At the heart of this strategy is the Ultium battery platform, which powers everything from mass-market to high-performance vehicles. General Motors, its subsidiaries and its joint venture entities sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Baojun and Wuling brands.
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INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Ordaōs and NonExomics | September 29, 2022
Ordaōs, a biotechnology company designing novel miniPROTM mini-proteins to help drug hunters deliver life-saving treatments, and NonExomics, a company specializing in the identification of novel targets from non-conventional protein-coding regions, announced a proof-of-concept research collaboration. As part of this endeavor, Ordaōs will use its proprietary design engine to generate and rank novel miniPRO™ candidates that meet specific target product profiles, beginning with three targets. NonExomics will conduct pre-clinical certification of these identified MinPRO™ proteins to demonstrate their promising commercial value.
"This partnership allows us to spotlight the power of our Design Engine to create customized miniPRO™ proteins that are more configurable, penetrable and stable, and easier to manufacture. Our collaboration with NonExomics also allows us the mutual opportunity to underscore the potential of our specialties utilizing machine-driven technology."
David Longo, CEO of Ordaōs
NonExomics identifies whether novel proteins can function as drug targets for therapeutic purposes or can be used for diagnostic processes. The company has developed a technology that effectively combines artificial intelligence, proteomics, transcriptomics, and genomics to identify novel targets for quicker diagnosis and treatment of diseases that are currently considered to be incurable or difficult to manage. NonExomics plans to develop new therapies and diagnostics based on its proprietary nonexomic targets.
"We at NonExomics are thrilled to be embarking on this exciting collaboration between our companies to fuel our shared goal of pursuing and developing new therapies for poorly treated or currently deemed incurable diseases," said Sudhakaran Prabakaran, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of NonExomics.
To select miniPRO™ candidates, Ordaōs will use its multitask meta-learning Ordaōs Design Engine to generate, appraise, and rank hundreds of thousands of proteins on their structures and drug-like properties for novel miniPRO™ candidates that meet the requirements of the desired specifications of NonExomics' product profile. NonExomics will then conduct a series of pre-clinical demonstrations of the selected Ordaōs miniPRO™ designs to prove they meet the specified product profiles.
More About The Ordaōs Design Engine
Ordaōs uses The Ordaōs Design Engine, to deliver true protein property design - leveraging continuous learning loops and proprietary data sets to translate human-targeted product criteria into machine-designed mini-proteins. Starting with amino acids, the Design Engine generates, appraises, and ranks billions of protein sequences and hundreds of thousands of protein structures and properties to create customized miniPRO™ proteins. These proteins are then rapidly evaluated in vitro to provide intelligent feedback on multiple design objectives including protein structure, binding specificity and affinity, solubility, stability, immunogenicity, and developability. This iterative process delivers optimized mini-proteins to meet the client's specific molecular target product profile (mTPP). They are also less likely to cause adverse side effects and are easier and less expensive to test, develop, and manufacture than traditional proteins. Using this approach, the Ordaōs Design Engine creates more ideal, unseen protein leads than others and can accelerate drug candidate development, increasing the probability of more therapeutically effective candidates. All of this provides clients with a high level of confidence in their investigational new drug (IND) applications.
About Ordaōs
Ordaōs is a human-enabled, machine-driven drug design company that helps birth novel therapies to reduce patient suffering, improve health, and extend life. Our flagship solution, miniPRO™ mini-proteins, enable drug hunters to deliver safer and more effective treatments in a fraction of the time of traditional discovery methods.
About NonExomics
NonExomics science and platform developed over eight years of rigorous academic and industry research, mines novel disease-associated proteins using the dark genome. NonExomics has opened up a new area of science with unlimited possibilities to cure diseases.
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INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Alloy Therapeutics | November 18, 2022
Alloy Therapeutics, a biotechnology ecosystem company, announced an antibody discovery collaboration spanning multiple precision immuno-oncology programs for Normunity, a biotech company that recently announced its $65 million Series A financing. The collaboration will support the advancement of Normunity’s immune normalizers, antibody therapies designed to target novel mechanisms that free the body’s normal immunity to fight cancer, which are conceived through a unique biotech-academic collaboration with a renowned immuno-oncology university research lab.
Alloy democratizes access to tools, technologies, and services that are foundational for discovering and developing therapeutic biologics and has partnered with more than 130 discovery teams across academia, biotech, and large biopharma organizations. Through its discovery services offering, Alloy conducts high-touch, bespoke therapeutic discovery campaigns against partners’ targets of interest.
“Our partnership reflects an exciting opportunity to pair Normunity’s insights in immune disruption and cancer disease biology with Alloy’s world-class antibody discovery expertise. We value Alloy’s collaborative approach and look forward to working together to advance the best therapeutic antibodies to target mechanisms discovered through Normunity’s platforms.”
Normunity Chief Scientific Officer William LaRochelle, PhD
The collaboration between Alloy and Normunity is leveraging Alloy’s high velocity antibody discovery services offering, Daedamab, which takes a sequencing-first approach to antibody discovery that reduces discovery timelines without sacrificing quality. The Daedamab team is based in Alloy’s research facility in Athens, GA, and its workflow comprises the ATX-Gx™, Alloy’s proprietary mice platform for human therapeutic antibody discovery, in addition to robust B cell isolation, next generation sequencing, cloning-free expression and a high throughput screening process—all supported by a rich informatics engine.
“We are very excited to work with Normunity on its set of unique immuno-oncology targets using our high velocity NGS-based antibody discovery methods leveraging the ATX-Gx platform," said Richard Shimkets, PhD, SVP of Genetics and New Technologies at Alloy Therapeutics and CEO of the Daedamab site. “This relationship is emblematic of Alloy’s expertise in deploying the right technologies and processes to find our partners the best therapeutic antibodies against the novel targets they bring us.”
Normunity is advancing into the clinic with programs that target mechanisms that drive the exclusion of T cells into immune-sensitive tumors and aim to deliver an active and effective immune system into cold tumors.
About Daedamab
Alloy’s Daedamab discovery service offers a novel, fast, powerful sequence-first approach to finding and making the best antibodies. The team is based in Athens, GA and supports Alloy collaborators with complete antibody discovery services, antibody sequencing of customer-provided material, expression and testing of customer-provided antibody sequences, humanization, and optimization services.
About Alloy Therapeutics
Alloy Therapeutics is a biotechnology ecosystem company empowering the global scientific community to make better medicines together. Through a community of partners across academia, biotech, and the largest biopharma, Alloy democratizes access to pre-competitive tools, technologies, services, and company creation capabilities that are foundational for discovering and developing therapeutic biologics across six modalities, including antibodies, TCRs, genetic medicines, peptides, cell therapies, and drug delivery. Partners may access all current and future technologies for a flat annual fee through Alloy’s Innovation Subscriptions offering. As a reflection of Alloy’s relentless commitment to the scientific community, Alloy reinvests 100% of its revenue in innovation and access to innovation.
About Normunity
Normunity, Inc., is a biotechnology company creating a new class of precision immuno-oncology medicines, called immune normalizers, that target novel mechanisms that free the body’s normal immunity against cancer. Based on an ongoing, interactive academic-biotech partnership with the lab of Dr. Lieping Chen at Yale School of Medicine, Normunity is targeting newly-discovered mechanisms of immune disruption in cancer based on proprietary discovery platforms that elucidate the complex interactions between human cancer and the immune system. The company is advancing an emerging pipeline of immune normalizers, including initial drug programs that target mechanisms that drive the exclusion of T-cells from immune-sensitive tumors and other mechanisms that are barriers to normal immune function in cancer. Normunity is located in Boston, Mass. and West Haven, Conn.
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