Ginkgo Bioworks – a company that is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity – announced the acquisition of Patch Biosciences. Patch Biosciences has built an AI platform for sequence design that enables more effective, specific, and durable genetic medicines and was backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Casdin Capital, and S32. This acquisition is intended to strengthen Ginkgo’s Gene Therapy Services, Cell Therapy Services, and RNA Therapeutics Services.
Ginkgo does not have a product portfolio or drug pipeline. Instead, Ginkgo offers R&D services to customers who are looking to innovate across industries, including many world-class partners in biopharma. And Ginkgo will incorporate Patch’s machine learning models and downstream assays into its existing platform, making new capabilities in synthetic promoter and untranslated region (UTR) engineering available to partners. Plus, Patch’s validated muscle promoters and robust RNA UTRs complement Ginkgo’s circular RNA and promoter screening platform technology, which is already accelerating the progress of the customer program.
This strategic move follows Ginkgo’s collaborations with Pfizer (based around the discovery of RNA-based drug candidates), with the aim of achieving efficient production, circularization, improved stability, and enhanced translation of each RNA construct. And Ginkgo is also working with Sensible Biotechnologies to develop an in vivo microbial mRNA manufacturing platform.
Ginkgo also announced the successful completion of a manufacturing optimization program with Biogen, redefining the industry standard for manufacturing recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based vectors. And the collaboration achieved its goals of enhancing the AAV production titers of Biogen’s gene therapy manufacturing processes.
The addition of Patch’s assets will help Ginkgo further expand its pipeline of gene therapy, cell therapy, and RNA programs and has the potential to accelerate progress on current programs immediately.
KEY QUOTES:
“Patch has built an excellent team and platform which we are excited to welcome to Ginkgo. Integrating Patch’s capabilities, libraries, and datasets is immediately valuable to our on-going programs and augments the genetic medicine toolkit we have built for our customers. We want to bring a unified R&D experience to our customers and offering integrated services that include specialized assets like Patch’s allow our customers to tap into a broader-than-ever capability set.”
– Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks
“Joining Ginkgo Bioworks represents an exciting step in our journey to engineer better genetic medicines. The shared vision and unique expertise of both teams can unlock new frontiers in programmable medicines, which we see as the future of medicine. We are excited to contribute our AI/ML capabilities to the impressive Ginkgo platform, and look forward to engineering better genetic medicines for Ginkgo’s customers in RNA therapeutics, gene therapy, and beyond.”
– JB Michel, CEO and co-founder of Patch Biosciences
