Tantu and Ginkgo Bioworks Announce Partnership to Engineer a Living Biotherapeutic for Gastrointestinal Healing

Tantu, a company engineering living biotherapeutic products to treat gastrointestinal diseases, and Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, today announced a partnership to accelerate the research and development of Tantu's therapeutic genes. Ginkgo, which recently announced a business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp., serves customers across industries seeking to develop new and better products using biology.

Tantu is working to create an orally administered, living biotherapeutic that will produce and apply anti-inflammatory therapeutic proteins directly into diseased sites in the gut, resulting in improved gut barrier function and faster mucosal healing in patients where systemic anti-inflammatory therapies are not enough. Ginkgo plans to apply its automated foundry to accelerate the traditionally slow steps of candidate strain construction and genomic integration and validation with the aim of accelerating Tantu's first program and potentially helping them reach clinical proof of concept in patients faster.

"Each year, 62 million Americans are diagnosed with a digestive disorder and current treatments don't sufficiently promote gastrointestinal healing, meaning many patients need to undergo invasive surgeries to improve their quality of life," said Neel Joshi, co-founder of Tantu. "A therapeutic to aid intestinal mucosal healing could transform patient care for a significant patient population."

"We are excited to partner with a pre-seed company like Tantu with the goal of reducing their time-to-market because we view it as an opportunity to invest in the biotech industry through the startups that are driving forward so much innovation," said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. "Working with Tantu provides Ginkgo with the opportunity to leverage its expertise in pharmaceuticals to support the development of a potentially transformative therapeutic for the millions struggling with digestive disorders."

Companies across numerous industries use Ginkgo's cell programming platform to find more effective, environmentally friendly ways to create products including food ingredients, fragrances, cosmetics, medicines, and more. By enabling the design of organisms that can produce valuable biological products, Ginkgo helps accelerate the development of innovative, bio-based solutions to the world's most pressing challenges.

About Tantu Therapeutics
Tantu is developing living biotherapeutic products to treat gastrointestinal diseases. Its lead therapeutic candidate is an engineered microbe that produces anti-inflammatory and healing agents from inside the gut lumen – something that no clinically approved therapeutic currently does. Tantu's local delivery strategy is designed to improve patient outcomes by reducing reliance solely on systemic anti-inflammatory drugs that can suppress the immune system.  Tantu's living biotherapeutic products are being designed to complement proven approaches to further improve patients' health and quality of life.

About Ginkgo Bioworks
Ginkgo is building a platform to enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company's platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo has also actively supported a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including K-12 pooled testing, vaccine manufacturing optimization and therapeutics discovery. In May 2021, Ginkgo announced a business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SRNG), which, if completed, will result in Ginkgo, through a parent entity, Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings, Inc., becoming a public company. The extraordinary general meeting of Soaring Eagle's shareholders in connection with the transaction has been scheduled for September 14, 2021 and the transaction is expected to close shortly thereafter, subject to customary closing conditions.