Breaking, a plastic degradation and synthetic biology company, launched at Colossal Biosciences based on a core discovery out of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Breaking also announced it launched with unveiling its discovery, X-32, which it will develop to address the global plastics crisis. And Breaking raised $10.5 million in a seed round.
In its natural state, X-32 can degrade polyolefins, polyesters, and polyamides, leaving carbon dioxide, water, and biomass behind in as little as 22 months. With future synthetic genetic edits, the team is focused on making X-32 faster, more efficient, and more effective while having a harmless environmental impact.
The world’s plastic problem is growing increasingly severe, as millions of tons of plastic are sitting in landfills and oceans. Nanoplastic fragments have also been found in bottled water.
X-32 is a breakthrough microbial discovery that destroys multiple types of plastic by rapidly breaking down hydrocarbon chains across different chemical structures. It works with polyolefins (the toughest plastic bonds), which include products like packaging materials, polyesters such as PET bottles, and polyamides such as nylon. In its current state, X-32 degrades up to 90% of polyesters and polyolefins in less than 22 months. This is a major improvement over other solutions targeting only a single plastic type.
In lab tests, X-32 started to break down paint brush bristles, fishing wire, and dental floss in less than five days. If left untreated, paintbrush bristles take 450 to 1,000 years to decompose, fishing wires can take 600 years, and dental floss takes 80 years. Simultaneously, X-32 utilizes plastics as a primary carbon source and needs no pre-treatment, sorting, cleaning, or decontamination, and it emits carbon dioxide, water, and biomass during the degradation process.
The team will utilize their expertise in synthetic biology to engineer X-32 into a faster, more efficient, and uniquely effective solution to break down more plastic faster. And they will first focus on identifying the enzyme used by X-32, which they believe breaks down the carbon bonds within plastics. By isolating the enzyme, then editing that enzyme, and applying AI/ML to evolve more efficient enzymes, the team will build an improved solution for wide commercial distribution.
The team identified numerous applications, such as wastewater, food waste, and marine applications, where X-32 and its further enhanced versions will be added to current microbe-based degradation programs. In the next few years, the team hopes to utilize their technology to ensure that newly created plastics have a faster degradation period and a smaller overall environmental impact.
Plus, as X-32 degrades plastics, it generates biomass containing different biomolecules that may hold immense value in various industries. And these molecules unveil potential for utilization in producing biofuels, biodegradable plastics, and high-value chemicals. This team will continue to investigate the use cases as they more deeply explore X-32’s enzyme secretion and biomass byproduct.
With 40 million tons of food waste in the U.S., Breaking sees the opportunity to reduce about 48 million tons of carbon dioxide in the U.S. as both profitable and mission-work.
Breaking was co-founded by the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University Donald Ingber, world-renowned biotech entrepreneur and Harvard geneticist George Church, CEO Sukanya Punthambaker, CSO Vaskar Gnyawali, Alba Tull, Kent Wakeford, and Ben Lamm.
Along with a co-founding team, the company announced its founding scientific advisory board members. This board includes:
1.) Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist who specializes in the genetics of ice age animals and plants. A pioneer in the scientific field called “ancient DNA,” Shapiro traveled extensively in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Siberia, and Canada collecting bones and other remains of long-dead creatures, including mammoths, giant bears, and extinct camels and horses. Using DNA sequences extracted from these remains, Shapiro’s work aims to understand better how the distribution and abundance of species changed in response to major climate changes in the past and why some species and communities are more resilient than others to help develop strategies for conservation of endangered species and ecosystems today. Before joining Colossal as Chief Science Officer, Shapiro was a Professor and Director of the Paleogenomics Laboratory at the University of California Santa Cruz and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Shapiro is highly acclaimed for her research; she has been named a Searle Scholar, Packard Fellow, National Geographic Explorer, and MacArthur Fellow, and is an elected Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is also an award-winning famous science author and communicator whose books “How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-extinction” (Princeton University Press 2015, 2020) and “Life As We Made It” (Basic Books 2021) explores how humans have been manipulating life on Earth for as long as we have existed and the potential of extending this to bring extinct species back to life.
2.) John Warner is one of the founders in green chemistry. He wrote the book that provides the definition and 12 principles of green chemistry with Paul Anastas in 1998. He has over 350 patents and worked with hundreds of companies worldwide as an industrial chemist. He received the Perkin Medal in 2014 from The Society of Industrial Chemistry. As an academic, he was a tenured full professor of chemistry and a tenured full professor of plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts, where he started the world’s first PhD program in Green Chemistry. He has over 120 publications in synthetic methodologies, non-covalent derivatization, polymer photochemistry, metal oxide semiconductors, and green chemistry. In 2022, he received the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal from the German Chemical Society and in 2004, the Presidential Award for Excellence In Science Mentoring (PAESMEM) from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and President George W Bush. As an inventor, Warner’s inventions have led to the founding of many companies in photovoltaics, neurochemistry, construction materials, and cosmetics. In 2016, he received the Lemelson Invention Ambassadorship from the Lemelson Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences (AAAS). Warner is a member of the Club of Rome, Distinguished Professor of Green Chemistry at Monash University in Australia, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, and Honorary Professor of Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin, where they have named the “John Warner Center for Start Ups in Green Chemistry.” Warner currently serves as President and CEO of The Technology Greenhouse.
3.) Jon Kaneshiro is Vice President of Oahu Waste Services, Inc., Hawaii’s largest waste hauling and recycling company. Kaneshiro oversees OWS and its subsidiaries’ investments and strategic initiatives across their recycling and composting operations, real estate holdings, and expansion efforts. Prior to this, Kaneshiro held algorithm development and strategy positions in quantitative finance and technology firms. Kaneshiro serves on the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, the Island of Oahu’s municipal water system. Kaneshiro has a bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Loyola Marymount University and a master’s in environmental engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
KEY QUOTES:
“I’ve spent my career in synthetic biology and protein engineering with the hope of developing something this transformational. In the future, our solution will be able to work across terrestrial and marine environments to break down today’s greatest threat to humankind/our existence: the plastic that is choking our world.”
– Breaking co-founder and CEO Sukanya Punthambaker, Ph.D.
“Breaking is solving one of the biggest problems on our planet. They are using the natural world as inspiration and layering on cutting edge technology to transform how we break down plastics. This is going to be one of the biggest breakthroughs of the decade and I’m excited to be part of it.”
– Jim Kim, General Partner of Builders VC, and a lead investor in Breaking
“We are excited to see how Colossal Biosciences has enabled our novel discovery to break away from its competitors in the plastic remediation space by developing a bioinspired technology that can degrade many types of plastics that are threatening our environment. This can be accomplished without pretreatment and the breakdown products could be used to produce other valuable materials and commodities. This is what sets Breaking apart from the field.”
– Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director and Core Faculty of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
“The first in-field pilots will target the food waste and composting industry. Food waste into landfills is costing $16B in taxpayer dollars per year. But that food can’t be composted because of plastic contamination. If we can remove the plastics, we can save the government a lot of money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help improve overall quality of life.”
– Kent Wakeford, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Breaking
“We have entered an era in which our environments and bodies are at risk to micro and nano particles of polymers (plastics) that we once trusted. We have also entered an age of exponential technologies in which we can see and seek the nuances and continua of polymers. Harmful-to-helpful is not nearly natural vs synthetic; it depends on size, shape, and location of the polymer particles. For example, polyethylene has the same set of bonds as beeswax, just longer. We are ‘Breaking’ these and reusing the parts in beneficial reconfigurations,” said
– Co-founder and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Core Faculty at Wyss Institute, Dr. George Church
“Our breakthrough natural approach to breaking down plastics is more environmentally friendly than most existing solutions.”
– Vaskar Gnyawali, co-founder and CSO of Breaking
“We could not be more thrilled to launch Breaking from stealth from Colossal. The technologies co-developed by the Wyss Institute provide limitless applications to address our planet’s pervasive plastic contamination challenges. Part of our core mission of ecosystem restoration at Colossal can only be achieved with the removal of plastic that plague our ecosystems and negatively impact biodiversity.”
– Breaking co-founder and Colossal CEO Ben Lamm
