Specialist
VP at LifeMine Therapeutics Inc
Agenda
- Ginkgo Bioworks' competitive positioning in the synthetic biology market
- Ginkgo's technologies and cell programming platforms – foundries and codebase
- Entrance into therapeutics and other partnerships
- H2 2021 competitive, scientific and growth outlook
Questions
1.
I love Ginkgo co-founder Tom Knight’s quote that “the interesting thing to program in the 21st century isn’t going to be computers – it’s biology”. How does that represent Ginkgo’s culture and capabilities?
2.
Ginkgo’s areas of expertise include strain improvement, enzyme discovery, biosecurity and mammalian cell engineering, but could you start by discussing foundries and codebase? Foundries are Ginkgo’s biological factories. How is the company automating and scaling organism engineering?
3.
What are prototype enzyme pathways and how do organism engineers build and test them to optimise them? What we’re really getting into is optimising the biological design.
4.
Could you explain the design decision support interfaces of Ginkgo’s Digital Technology capability that translate complex biological processes into simple and intuitive interactions? I’m aware of the talent within this group, so this is likely a competitive advantage for the company.
5.
Could you explain how Ginkgo is using foundry-class codebase – so the synergistic feedback loop – to unlock new biological knowledge, which the company refers to as the hidden treasures? I found the scale of the company’s experimental data, how it streamlined it to reduce cost and how it enabled its use in a much more friendly and efficient way to be incredible. The company took computational experts with an interest in biology and went down the programming route as a first qualification, which is interesting, as you mentioned the cost of sequencing was reduced by 200-fold. It has stated that sequencing is just the beginning, alluding to redesigning enzymes and uncovering solutions to optimise data and machine learning.
6.
What are your thoughts on the competitive landscape? You mentioned Zymergen and Amyris, but could you discuss any other players that could pose competitive threats to Ginkgo?
7.
Could you elaborate on mammalian cell design?
8.
Biogen and Ginkgo announced in May 2021 a collaboration and licence agreement to develop a novel gene therapy manufacturing platform. What are your thoughts on this collaboration as it relates to developing and producing next-gen recombinant AAV [adeno-associated virus] and overcoming the development challenges of viral vectors for gene therapy?
9.
Ginkgo signed a purchase agreement in May 2021 to acquire Dutch DNA Biotech, which develops and supplies fungal biotechnology processes for industrial production. What are your thoughts on this acquisition and how Ginkgo will integrate it into its cell programming, especially around fungal CDKs [cell development kits] to enable new applications?
10.
If we consider the history of Dutch DNA, which was an MBO [managed buyout], there are some smart people at the company who recognised the value and ran with it. Do you have any comments on the acquisition?
11.
Do you think in silico still has limitations in cell engineering or old chemistry in small molecule or new biotech, considering how far it’s advanced since the 1980s when it had a poor reputation? It’s fairly accurate now.
12.
Where do you think Ginkgo’s strategic end market will most likely be around applying the fungal CDKs to create products following its announced acquisition of Dutch DNA?
13.
What do you think Ginkgo has done with the scaling of coronavirus testing? In November 2020, the US government loaned the company USD 1.1bn for coronavirus testing and the production of raw materials for therapies that may address future pandemics. What might that money be directed towards around testing and optimising biosecurity infrastructure?
14.
What are your thoughts on Ginkgo’s May 2019 acquisition of Warp Drive Bio’s genome mining platform? Fellow Third Rock start-up Revolution Medicines absorbed Warp Drive Bio in 2018. How might the merging of the two teams and their biological information and technical capabilities help develop novel classes of next gen antibiotics?
15.
What work is Ginkgo doing with its partnership with Roche to bring the antibiotic candidates into the clinical stage? This partnership is tied to the company’s acquisition of Warp Drive Bio’s genome mining platform. I believe Ginkgo can still earn USD 160m out of the USD 300m that Roche committed in development and potential sales milestones when it tied up with Warp Drive in 2017.
16.
700,000 people die from antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide annually and the UN predicts that figure could reach 10 million by 2050. Ginkgo’s deep expertise in genomics and natural product discovery could be
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the key to unlocking new products that can combat the rise of antibiotic resistance, which connects to our discussion on hidden natural products. How can Ginkgo discover hidden natural products to address this global problem?
17.
Why do you think the Ginkgo-Synlogic relationship has worked so well since its inception in 2017? Synlogic is a pioneer in synthetic biology and the two companies have multiple undisclosed metabolic programmes in preclinicals. What opportunity does this relationship represent?
18.
The coronavirus pandemic brought about the rise of nucleic acid vaccines, where DNA code is injected to trigger cellular activity. These are produced using fermentation, which not many realise is paramount in bio industrial applications. Ginkgo has done a lot of work in fermentation, which is perhaps due to its fragrance background or industrial agricultural background, but this could perfectly set the company up for this new era of medicine involving cutting-edge nucleic acid DNA code programming. Could you discuss how Ginkgo is potentially unique in understanding fermentation and being able achieve it at its scale and with its high throughput pipeline to process experiments? I don’t believe many biotechs set out to get smart on fermentation.
19.
Could you explain biosecurity? This is a core issue and Ginkgo is working with the IARPA [Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity]. How is the company developing frameworks for monitoring and assessing the safety and security of technology used to synthesise DNA? How does it detect potential threats using software that analyses DNA sequences and identify if the new pathogen’s sequence was developed naturally or engineered by humans? Why is Ginkgo especially capable of performing these tasks?
20.
Is the supply chain so regimented and defined that the sort of solution where orders are flagged as potentially being used for non-prophylactic reasons will protect us? Alternatively, should we worry about that process outside of the normal pathways? What are the processes outside of the pathway that Ginkgo is trying to flag or scrutinise? I’ve read that the company has great detection ability here, but would players around the world order sequences?
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