Biofounders Podcast: Fun conversations with the founders, investors, researchers and artists you haven’t heard of | Follow along on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram | Support the podcast with a 5-star rating on Spotify ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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In the last couple of years I’ve seen a lot of criticism1 toward minimalism. People will compare a modern building to a Gothic cathedral and go “when did we stop building beautiful things? Modern design prioritizes convenience, and it is making us sick with its neutral colors, smooth surfaces, narrow constraints, and lack of stories”.

When looking at bioreactors, minimal cells, recombinant proteins, and IVF robots, I cannot help but wonder whether biotechnology is following a similar minimalist ideology by stripping the complexity from wild-type biology.

Broadly speaking, definitions in art and design will say that minimalism is the emphasis on the essence of something and that it avoids expressing the opinion of its creator or any other non-essential wrapping, because “less is more”. Conversely, maximalism could be thought of as the excess and abundance of something, because “more is more”.

But according to whom or to what standards are we making these claims? Is biology minimalist because evolution selects for the survival and reproduction of functional elements by spelling only four letters differently? Or is it maximalist because of the “immense” diversity and symbiotic relationships that emerge from this code, spanning the cell to a world?

After WWII, minimalism arose both due to the need to rebuild cities fast, and as a philosophical statement against the historical maximalism practiced by the elites. Ironically, in simplifying objects, minimalism incentivizes their mass usage and consumption. This is better exemplified by minimalist yet addictive social media interfaces, and is also present in home decoration with programmed obsolescence that results in consumerism and houses that can be built in days and scaled to neighborhoods that look the same.

Minimalism and maximalism, however, are not opposite but intertwining and, in fact, complementary ideologies. A synthetic cell grown in a bioreactor for a single function can seem as minimalist as an iPhone made out of stainless steel and glass running 0s and 1s. But both hold immense power to scale in complexity and thus generate a maximalist amount of AI slop or a biological catalog the size of planet Earth.

Instead of absolute maximalism or minimalism, biology pursues homeostasis. Simple at the impermanent individual level, complex at the enduring population level. Neither waste nor excessive consumption can be afforded. Convenience is required, but details are essential. Biology doesn’t have to sacrifice beauty for scale.

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>FASTA: short reads of the biotech ecosystem beyond trad-pharma | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies + biotech philosophy | Follow on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.

1. Fractyl Health ($GUT) is developing a GLP-1 gene therapy.

2. Muse bio collects menstrual blood donations for stem cell research.

3. Chilean startup ByBug uses fly larvae as protein biofactories.

4. David Sinclair’s Life Bioscience will begin human trials this year.

5. BioProtocol just launched a new men’s health supplement.

6. Enzymatic conversion of blood groups for kidney donation.

7. DGP’s plant-based engine lubricants sell in Home Depots across the US.

8. Cymbiotika cracked the code to ready-to-drink creatine.

9. Abel re-launched as a biotech-based fragrance house.

10. Poets: the rise of wellness & looks-maxxing coaches.

Become a Biopunk member to read more about all of these!

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>FASTA: short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Follow on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.

It’s been a loooongggg break from posting, but I haven’t stopped reading and thinking about biotech. Let’s catch up on fertility, neurotech, longevity, and peptide startups:

1. Chinese billionaires have been ordering babies by the dozen, made through IVF and surrogacy.

2. RenewalBio makes “synthetic” embryos directly from stem cells.

3. Fairtility, the AI tool that enhances the work of embryologists.

4. Colossal Foundation donated $1.5M to George Church to make artificial wombs.

5. Becoming is an SF startup that builds exogenous placenta.

6. The DOE will train AI scientists on Federal scientific datasets.

7. DARPA’s new Generative Optogenetics (GO) Program.

8. Antitrust in the science instrument industry.

9. Sam Altman and Masayoshi Son’s new R&D company.

10. Evolv’s weight loss pill x Oura Ring.

11. Flow Neuroscience’s transcranial stimulation device has been approved by the FDA.

Subscribe to read all 30 news about: a marketplace for non-human genomic data, the ozempic economy, the company cultivating pharma-grade shrooms, a phage therapy for obesity, betting on human enhancement, biotech new masculinity, endometriosis startups, quantum dots, health by subscription…

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>FASTA is back with short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Follow on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram!

1. 🐎 Embryo Corporation edited horse embryos directly for the first time. They have also edited cat embryos to make hypoallergenic pets.

2. 👶 OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong are funding Preventive, one of the new startups researching CRISPR babies.

3. 🎙️ Listen to the newest Biofounders interview with Grace Chuang on the biocreative path, fears in biotech branding, and what biotech is missing today.

4. 🦣 Colossal Bioscience acquired Viagen to expand their de-extinction efforts through cloning and cryopreservation biotech.

5. 🥛 Remilk is partnering with Gad Dairies to sell their bio-identical milk in Israel, the US, Canada and Singapore.

6. 🔬 The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative acquired Evolutionary Scale. The organization is refocusing its efforts on AI applied to scientific research.

7. 🥚 EVERY raised $55M in a series D to expand their manufacturing capacity for precision fermentation egg proteins now hitting Walmarts across the US.

8. 🤖 Jeff Bezos is launching Project Prometheus with $6.2B to apply AI to the physical world, including drug discovery.

9. 🏭 Synonym raised $20M series A led by a South Korean conglomerate with other investments in biomanufacturing.

10. James Watson passed away this month. I think we should revisit his misogynous, racist and homophobic comments with new eyes.

Extra Biopunk: Asterix Foods, selective crystallization for cheaper purification, BilliontoOne IPO, first trillion-dollar biotech, the AGI argument for longevity.

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Biofounders: Fun conversations with unconventional founders, biohackers, CEOs, and investors you haven’t met yet | Follow along on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram | Support the podcast with a 5-star rating on Spotify ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

In this Biofounders episode:

• [0:00 - 1:53] Introduction by Sofia

• [2:29] Grace introduces herself

• [8:14] Turning a design hobby into a job in biotech branding

• [11:21] How branding in biotech has changed in the last decade

• [16:08] Common fears around branding and storytelling in biotech founders

• [18:48] B2B vs B2C biotech branding fears and needs

• [22:35] Bringing dinosaurs to the NYSE for Ginkgo’s IPO

• [24:21] How AI has changed our jobs

• [29:09] Questions relevant in today’s biotech ecosystem

• [34:10] Going from biotech tools to products that people want

• [35:30] How do you build a brand when everybody’s doing the same thing?

• [38:25] New formats for biotech branding and a secret new project

• [41:28] What makes Oscillator unique

• [43:38] Making things that don’t suck and branding as a means to make science work

• [47:33] Working with Christina Agapakis and finding her own voice

• [51:29] Rituals to stay creative

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Grace is a chemical engineer turned creative director, or as we would both agree, a Biocreative.

At Ginkgo Bioworks, she orchestrated branding for the company’s IPO, which was the largest of a biotech startup ever, and she cofounded GROW, a magazine about the societal aspects of biotechnology, which circulated more than 15,000 copies around the world.

She was the first scientist to be recognized by Young Guns as one of the top creatives under 30 in the world, and her work has been recognized by the Art Directors Club, Webbys, Society of Publication Designers, and PRINT.

In 2022, she started doing freelance work for companies like Bitbiome and Solugen, and last year, she joined forces with Christina Agapakis to start Oscillator, an agency that crafts new stories where biology and technology meet.

This episode is definitely for the biocreatives, whether you’re into branding or storytelling, or you’re simply curious to learn how it’s like to work at the intersection of art and science.

We talked about why branding can sometimes feel like therapy for scientists, fears of B2B and B2C biotech companies in their storytelling, what questions she would ask if she was leading a biotech magazine today, what biotech is missing these days, new branding formats, and the Oscillator ethos.

>FASTA is constantly evolving. You can now read 10 weekly news of non-trad biotech faster. In honor to paid subscribers, there’s 10 extra bits with explainer paragraphs | Follow on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube for more content.

The spookiest biotech in a nutshell

1. 🦏 The Biorescue Consortium is partnering with Colossal Biosciences to save the Northern White Rhino using IVF and genetic engineering.

2. 🔬 Nucleus Genomics launched Origin, a set of open-weighted models for polygenic risk assessment of nine different diseases in IVF embryos.

3. 🧬 Preventive raised $30M from private investors to assess the safety of human embryo gene editing as a Public Benefit Corporation.

4. 👼 Manhattan Genomics is a New York-based startup pursuing human embryo editing for medical purposes.

5. 🎙️ Biofounders interview with Alexander Titus: Biotech from the Pentagon to Silicon Valley, storytelling, and frameworks for progress in our industry.

6. 🦠 Former Palantir Lifesci director launches Valthos, a biodefense software startup, backed by $30M from OpenAI, Founders Fund and Lux Capital.

7. 🤖 Claude will now connect to Benchling, Biorender, PubMed, 10X Genomics and other apps, and be able to perform quality control of genomic data.

8. 🖥️ Benchling is giving scientists direct access to NVIDIA’s GPU-optimized protein folding models.

9. 🦖 Plasmidsaurus launched a new RNA-Seq service for Illumina short reads.

10. 🧛‍♂️ Bryan Johnson raised $60M to bring his longevity protocol to the mainstream through Blueprint.

Extra Biopunk: Adaptyx biosensors, Evvy vaginal microbiome tests, Contraline male contraceptives, Chinese animal models, expiring GLP-1 patents, protein supplement reports, €8M for cell cultured cosmetics, lab-grown fruit research, bioelectric pumpkins…

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As part of his work in the public sector, Alexander Titus is one of the Commissioners at the United States National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. He previously worked at the DoD as the Head of Biotechnology Strategy, and helped launch PPPs BioMADE and armi.

With too many interests to count, Titus was also part of early-stage startups like Colossal Biosciences; he worked at Google’s healthcare and life sciences division, and cofounded Dauntless Ventures and Decycle Bio.

We’ve followed each other since he ran the Bioeconomy.XYZ publication in 2020. Today, he writes about the intersection of science, technology, policy, futures, and fiction through The Connected Ideas Project. His first science fiction novel, Synthetic Eden is now available.

In this Biofounders episode:

• 0:00-3:53 Introduction

• 3:55 Public and private sector in biotech innovation

• 10:11 Questions the Pentagon asking about biotech during the pandemic

• 13:13 Building credibility as biotechnologists through different storytelling

• 17:49 Lessons from Bioeconomy.XYZ, The Connected Ideas Project, and Synthetic Eden

• 21:05 How to think about genetically engineered human embryos

• 27:11 Increasing our reliance on AI and robotics-powered biotechnology

• 32:35 US-China biotechnological race

• 36:20 Metrics to assess the progress of biotech

• 40:37 Lessons from the last few years of the biotech industry and analogies to the tech industry

• 46:09 How Titus personally decides what to work on at a given time

Biofounders: Fun conversations with unconventional founders, biohackers, CEOs, and investors you haven’t met yet | Follow along on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram | Support the podcast with a 5-star rating on Spotify ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The following is an edited version of our conversation where I include some of my personal takeaways and thoughts around the issues we discussed.

Between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley

Titus has evidently moved everywhere in between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. My first question was what each sector may systematically misunderstand about the others when it comes to biotechnology.

He highlighted that the most common misconceptions are not about the technology, but about the process through which that community operates.

Innovators like to say that government is super slow compared to them, but the difference in governments is that they manage orders of magnitude more millions of dollars. Even though they don’t swing quickly, governments make big moves when they do.

Similarly, assuming that companies can “just move fast and break things” if they’re given enough capital is wrong if there’s not a good structure or much more basic technological advancements are required first.

He shared the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as an example of how scientists can provide scientific perspective to policy-makers, as well as BioMADE and ARMI, as examples of biotech public-private partnerships in the US.

He also pointed out, however, that we lack understanding in the other direction: a way for policy-makers to understand how startups and companies work from the inside — I suggest they read Biopunk as a start…

After that, I was curious to see a bit inside the Pentagon. Titus was there during a particularly interesting time, between 2019 and 2020 when the COVID pandemic was just getting started. I asked him what key questions were being asked about biotech there and then.

“My job was to bring the green goo to the zoom and boom people” he shared. Biology became real from a defense standpoint when all of a sudden the military couldn’t operate because they too had to quarantine. It was harder to understand the relevance of biotechnology before then.

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Telling different stories

Going back to the subject of communication between scientists and people with other roles, I wondered if showing the products instead of just talking about them may strengthen bioscientists’ credibility in front of policymakers… though I now acknowledge this may also look like a chicken-egg problem.

Before the classic “Show don’t tell”, Titus suggested that there’s another way to tell. We both agree that most scientists are trained to fact-tell more than we are trained to story-tell, and this bores the hell out of everyone (I think that sometimes even scientists ourselves).

To add on to that, we barely stop to think of how much of a faith-based biology is. While this may sound very spicy to most scientists, one just needs to put on the shoes of anyone who doesn’t perform biological experiments on their day-to-day to realize that all the liquids we move around look the same.

It’s easy to forget that before we picked up a microscope, we couldn’t see individual cells. DNA, viruses, bacteria, or even our individual cells, and how they behave feel more real to us because we see them through our equipment on our everyday.

Contrast that with electrical engineering, which has now manifested into all sorts of electronic devices that we use all the time, or chemical engineering which has also made possible a great amount of objects around us, from the fuel in our cars to our nylon clothes.

Now, of course, I’m not saying that people don’t interact with biology at all. After all, we are biology ourselves, and we eat the product of it every day. But bioengineering itself is what is just beginning to have that first-hand connection with final consumers that other kinds of products have.

After his time at the Pentagon, Titus built Bioeconomy.XYZ as a platform for scientists to tell their stories. Not only the what but also the why. In this sense, he thinks science fiction helps you build characters who live the experience that you’re trying to convey, and to forecast how these technologies may evolve.

Thinking about designer babies

A lot of the hardest (and personally most exciting) topics to discuss and communicate in biotechnology these days inevitably carry with them ethical questions.

However, I often argue that when it comes to issues like gene-edited human embryos, “should we?” is the wrong question. I wanted to ask Titus not what he thinks of this topic, but how we think of it, and what better ways there are of discussing it.

He agreed that it’s not an “if” question, but a “when” question. His book, Synthetic Eden, is made to stop people from hiding in corners in these debates and decide between supporting genetic engineering or human extinction.

That triggered a thought I’ve been having lately around the dependency we may eventually develop on automated and AI-powered IVF and potentially even “human production” quite à la Brave New World — What will happen when not using these technologies to create healthy humans is not an alternative? When human and other species’ reproduction becomes a matter of machines?

Titus thinks these worries are not too dissimilar from those people had in the 19th century regarding electricity — I may agree. A technology becoming indispensable may actually be a sign of its excellence over the “alternatives”.

After all, the whole urban world already depends on electricity, automobiles, the internet, fossil fuels, and increasingly on AI. And to the point of enhancement, we already are enhanced by these technologies. The industrialization of biology — growing things inside bioreactors — may one day reach that point as well.

Biotechnology is changing what it means to be human, or any other species for that matter. When Titus was at Colossal — yes, the company that “de-extinguished the dire wolf and the woolly mice” — he used to ask himself “where does an elephant end and a mammoth start?”.

We may also ask how far we can engineer ourselves before we stop being human. Personally, I align with Julian Huxley’s vision that the human race is to be transcended (transhumanism!)… I wonder if, from a philosophical point of view, the maximal mission of genetic engineering is actually to engineer humankind into something else that is definitely no longer human: to “extinguish” ourselves?

Assessing progress in biotechnology

“Why did it take so long for the US government to wake up to China?” I dared to ask. In retrospect, it’s obvious that these affairs only became public this year. Still, Titus reasons that where the US used to expect to lead science until recently, they don’t take that for granted anymore.

I personally ignore any economic theories of innovation, but it was interesting to remember how, unlike the US, countries like Singapore and China have multi-decade-long plans for specific areas of innovation (like BCIs or food security). From a Thielean standpoint, they’re definite optimists.

As the US goes through a whole lot of changes in their public science institutions, it seems a good time to ask what metrics could reliably help us assess the progress in biotechnology, in a country like that.

While the number of papers and patents is still relevant, that science needs to be operationalized it into companies and products, or else we won’t actually benefit from it. Titus, therefore, would pay closer attention to companies that last.

“Back in 2019, biotech companies would come to me saying ‘I can make anything you want, what do you want?’. But people want to buy a bottle of water, not gallons of chemicals. Everybody had brought beautiful platforms to serve, but we were all starving because nobody had brought any food. The first era of biotech was selling microchips for computers that didn’t exist yet”.

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With this in mind, and after learning a bit about his own journey in the biotech industry throughout these years, I was curious to know how Titus personally decided which biotech projects are worth pursuing at any given moment.

“I am less focused on the what than the who. I love doing hard things with great people”. Though he doesn’t like to point to “the next big thing”, he thinks that shortening cycle times to read, write and engineer biology will be very important.

>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! They’re building the next generation of military medicine for rapid wound healing and pathogen detection—advancing solutions from frontline emergencies to everyday healthcare.

1. 🧬 Embryo optimization arrives in Mexico

Clínica de la Fertilidad (CdelaF) has partnered with Nucleus Genomics to bring genetic optimization of human embryos to Latin America for the first time. The IVF clinic is also adopting the EmbryoScope time-lapse technology by Vitrolife Group to monitor embryonic development.

Before starting CdelaF, Dr. Enrique Cervantes specialized in reproductive endocrinology and fertility at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and worked at IVI RMA Global, a leading reproductive medicine group, in Spain for seven years. He brings eight years of experience as a founder and CEO of CdelaM, a gynecological and obstetric clinic.

An important question left to answer about CdelaF’s partnership with Nucleus is how to ensure an unskewed data analysis, given the data Nucleus’ algorithms are trained on may not be representative of the clinic’s clients’ genetics. As for time-lapse tech, this study disproves its usefulness in increasing IVF success rates. It’ll be great to chat with Enrique to understand this better.

2. 🍫 Cacao embryos

California Cultured patented their methods of producing chocolate from cacao plant somatic embryos. Unlike callus, which is normally used in plant cell culture, these tissues produce high levels of fat naturally, as well as the critical triglycerides (POP, POS, and SOS) that make cocoa butter solid at room temperature but quick to melt in the mouth.

They have a 10-year deal with Japanese chocolate company Meiji and are partnering with biomanufacturing company Pow.Bio to reach industrial-scale production.

Biopunk paid subscribers have exclusive access to a video tour of California Cultured’s lab-grown chocolate facility:

3. 🤖 Trilobot One and Trilobio OS

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! They’re building the next generation of military medicine for rapid wound healing and pathogen detection—advancing solutions from frontline emergencies to everyday healthcare.

1. BCI glasses are the next iPhone

Cognixion is launching a clinical trial to allow 10 paralyzed patients with speech disorders to communicate through their BCI integrated with the Apple Vision Pro. The BCI uses six EEG sensors to collect brain signals, and the headset allows for AI-generated suggestions, eye tracking or head movement commands.

Like Synchron, Cognixion will be using Apple’s new BCI protocol. Since Apple is developing AirPods with BCIs and AR glasses similar to Meta’s, I wouldn’t be surprised if low-resolution BCI glasses are also in their pipeline for the next 5-10 years.

On a philosophical note, I think it’s important to keep in mind how much autonomy each kind of technology can actually give us in the long term. BCIs will reduce communication burdens, but where are the gene cures?

2. K18 x Future Society

K18’s peptides have bonded with Future Society’s extinct rainforest tree fragrance in a limited edition hair mask! The patented K18PEPTIDE™ can repair multiple types of bonds in hair, while the Floating Forest scent was inspired by an extinct rainforest tree once found only in Borneo.

Future Society started as a Ginkgo Bioworks project led by Christina Agapakis. The scientists collaborated with the Harvard Herbarium to sequence the DNA of six extinct flower species, and expressed their sesquiterpene synthase genes in yeast to recreate their ancestral scent.

Though making fragrances through genetic engineering is not economically viable yet, the company now led by Jasmina Aganovic worked with professional perfumers to replicate the individual scent molecules and their products can now be found in 46 retail locations across the US.

For its part, K18 started with Portuguese research in 2016, turned into a company in 2020 and was acquired by Unilever in 2023. The brand is now available in over 90 countries, and their biotech is now used in hair products, which may help their new partners expand brand awareness among both consumers and beauty brands.

3. Update on Google’s Calico

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You and I remember Dr. Jiankui He’s announcement of the world’s first gene-edited babies in 2018, as well as his following 2-year prison sentence. What has the average person heard about the issue since then?

Crickets.

Bioethicists and journalists exiled the idea from the zeitgeist, made it too taboo to even consider. If “should we” questions were asked, they almost always led to “no” answers.

Seven years later, Silicon Valley startups are already selecting human embryos and investors are hungry for startups that CRISPR them.

Nucleus Genomics and Orchid Bioscience offer whole genome embryo sequencing to select your embryo based on their genetics. Manhattan Genomics and Dr. He himself say to be building embryo editing services, and tech investors like Brian Armstrong (CEO of Coinbase) have publicly shown interest in funding human embryo editing companies.

Who is discussing these topics in public? Who is asking different questions or providing different answers, given the times? Where are all the biotech philosophers?

My prayers were finally heard, and last month, The Free Press organized a debate with Jamie Metzl, Allyson Berent, Carter Snead, and Lydia Dugdale. The question: Is designing babies unethical — Or a moral imperative?

As a biotechnologist, I need to study this subject a LOT more deeply. Personally, I need to think a LOT more about it. This discussion, however, sparked some preliminary thoughts…

First, I don’t think we are scared of designer babies, we’re scared of the socioeconomic inequalities they may enlarge.

“If their babies are enhanced and mine isn’t, mine will be at a greater disadvantage than ever”. It’s true.

This is not a problem of biotechnology, but of economics. We do not live in egalitarian societies, but in meritocratic ones.

So here’s another teaser: having babies, “wild type” ones through this old tech called sex, is already a luxury to many. Period.

Global birth rates have declined so drastically in the last few years. While having children is now a status symbol of the elites, and middle class GenZ are having less sex, low income countries will be those with the youngest population.

That means those who can afford to have babies will also be the only ones enhancing them.

Second, biology is (indeed) very complex.

This means two things: that we may not know how seemingly simple edits will impact babies as they grow, or their offspring. It also means that optimizing for “traits” like high intelligence may be farther away than most people fear.

“Once we allow medical edits, we will move on with enhancement” is an argument I completely agree with. Biology finds a way, and so do consumers, especially when something desired is legally restricted.

Yet again, the enhancements may not concern aesthetics or intelligence, since we don’t know enough about many of those complex traits yet.

As the graveyard of biotech shows, the fact that silicon valley is ready to commercialize certain technological promises doesn’t mean it’s ready to make them real.

Finally, I think too many people have been concerned about the technology being restricted to elites. However, if it is in the best interest of companies, governments, and individuals to make it as cheap and accessible as possible, and knowing this is technologically possible indeed, I have a final question:

Would it be more ethical to pass on messy genes, and preserve the right not to be edited, than to pass on healthy ones?

Would it be ethical for governments or insurance companies, at some point, make of gene therapies and germline editing a requirement to reduce healthcare costs?

I’m not sure it’s morally correct, but I think they will.

That leads to my conclusion: I think that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

It would be foolish to assume that gene editing, including germline editing, will not bring any negative repercussions, including those suggested by those against, and some other still unforeseen consequences.

At the same time, it is true that under free markets, and given the great suffering that some parents and patients go through, we will inevitably take the risk.

Thank you for paying attention to some of these preliminary thoughts. I’m eager to know how my arguments grow stronger as I read more philosophy, transhumanism, and economics books.

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! They’re building the next generation of military medicine for rapid wound healing and pathogen detection—advancing solutions from frontline emergencies to everyday healthcare.

1. Vitropep 🙅‍♀️ 💉

From weight loss to wound healing applications, peptides are perhaps the hottest biotech these days. Vitropep stabilizes peptides as microneedles that can be administered topically through a painless patch (no more needles!) that carries up to 90% of the API and is stable at room temperature (no cold chain).

Founder Christophe Tarabout, a biophysicist, has proven in vitro and in vivo efficiency for two known commercial peptides used in the IVF process and for bowel diseases. He’s running promising tests for GLP-1 and has filed two patents. The 3-year-old company is part of Genopole and currently fundraising.

2. Swimclub 🩲

Swimclub is the first clinically formulated sperm performance supplement. A combination of vitamin D3, lycopene, spermidine, zinc and 11 other branded ingredients are formulated to target sperm count, motility, morphology, and DNA fragmentation for improved fertility in males who are trying to get pregnant.

While the decline in sperm count is in the zeitgeist, fertility is still more often associated with women, who unlike their counterparts, are expected to take prenatal vitamins as part of the pregnancy or conception efforts. Squared Circles, the venture studio behind swimclub, was challenged with turning Dr. Michael Eisenberg’s science into a desirable brand.

The capsules are made in FDA-registered, cGMP-certified US facilities, and start at $380 for a 90-day subscription, which is recommended as sperm takes at least 72 days to generate.

3. Until, the hibernation company ❄️

A little over a year ago, longevity investor and scientist Laura Deming announced the recovery of electrical activity from cryopreserved rodent neural tissue at Until, her new Interstellar-esque new company. So far, they’ve raised US$100M+ to preserve whole human organs for transplants, and one day, whole bodies.

The very interdisciplinary challenge they’re working to solve is how to protect the tissue when cooling and rewarming. They need to change the temperature fast enough to prevent ice formation, but not too fast so there are no thermal gradients across the whole volume of the tissue.

Instead of moonshot Disney-like tech for billionaires, it seems sensible to target the demand for the thousands of organ transplants which are actually lost each year to logistical delays or lack of a timely match by developing better cryo-tech.

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4. Long-release pills 💊

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According to an estimate from the website Share the Luck, there is only one four-leaf clover for every 5,076 three-leaf clovers. So far, we only know that the gene responsible for this rare trait is recessive for the quadruploid plants, and that luck favors warm conditions, approximately two-fold when it comes to growing four leaves.

Vincent Pennetti, who has been fascinated by the iconic plants since he was a teen, recently finished his PhD at the Parrot Lab at the University of Georgia, where they studied the multifoliolate leaves of Trifolium repens (common clovers species).

One of their papers highlights that the Trifolium genus could have originated from multifoliolate ancestors whose leaflet number was reduced during evolutionary time via a dominant locus that inhibits the expression of multifoliolate leaves.

The precise genotype of the iconic four-leaf clover, however, remains a mystery. After all, who wants to invest tax dollars to figure St. Patrick out? This is not a science project. It is an artistic quest on how the cultural meaning of an organism changes as it morphs from a rare gift of nature into an engineered product.

Per his LinkedIn profile, Vincent is still an independent clover breeder. He once sold $300 worth of clovers to a guy who wanted to give them out at a senior living community for St. Patrick’s Day. When it comes to bioengineered clovers though, he thinks that would “ruin the search for everybody else” and prefers not to be the one doing it.

Poets of Living Objects think differently of this issue. A very ambitious project would not only bioengineer Trifolium to have four leaves, but also make its leaves iridescent, bigger, and reactive to touch like Mimosa pudica… as far as I could read, no one has done or tried this yet.

Philosophically speaking, biology has long relied on statistics, a backward-looking lens that reduces reality to frequencies, averages, randomness. Bioengineering, by contrast, could support itself on calculus that captures direction, infinitesimal change, and precise transformation.

The bioengineered four-leaf clover would make a statement: life is no longer a lottery ticket.

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram! | Versión en Español

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1. Argentina builds with biology 🐎

Gabriel Vichera was doing his PhD on cloning, IVF, and genetic modification of bovines at the University of Buenos Aires when he saw a single polo mare clone be sold for nearly a million dollars at an auction, right there in the capital of polo: Argentina.

He set out to found Kheiron Biotech the next year and by 2017, before the first CRISPR babies were born in China, the team had created nine genetically modified horse embryos. Their initial backer, Daniel Sammartino, is the founder and CEO of Proinvesa, a group of biotechnology, pharma and veterinarian startups based in Argentina.

The horses they unveiled a few weeks ago were CRISPR’d to inhibit the myostatin gene and thus, have a better performance in polo. Today, the company sells horse clones at an average price of $40,000 USD per clone, apart from offering stem cell treatments and gene banking.

2. Enveda becomes a unicorn 🦄

Enveda has built the world’s largest library of plant-derived molecules linked to diseases, symptoms, and therapeutic potential. By combining mass spectrometry with proprietary LLMs, they can analyze tens of thousands of molecules at a time, instead of just one.

Their dermatitis and asthma candidate has passed phase 1 in clinical trials, and they have twelve other preclinical candidates for indications such as IBD and obesity. Their recent $150M USD Series D brings their total funding to $517M and gives them a unicorn status.

3. Cultivated wood 🪵

In 2024, New Dawn Bio grew wood directly from plant cells under controlled lab conditions, without growing a whole tree, at Wageningen University. This month, they secured a €1.4M Eurostars grant to advance their research at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology.

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Recently, 1984 has been brought up on online videos that reference AI and social media companies as the “Big Brothers” used for massive civil surveillance, as well as the drivers of a “newspeak” which may simply reflect how our addictive technologies atrophy our brains.

In Orwell’s book, the nuclear family is also distorted such that children can accuse their parents of “thought-crime” to get them “vaporized” (cancelled, cough cough). However, little has been said about “Anti-sex”.

The political party in 1984 arranges marriages such that couples have no desire towards each other. They reframe sex from a private act of love, to the duty of producing obedient citizens.

As I scroll past news about automated IVF factories, embryo selection services, GenZ’s poor sexual life, and declining fertility rates, I can’t help but think that biotech too is bringing us to a 1984 world, and there’s not much we can do about it.

In a world in which marriages don’t last, young people don’t want to marry, and most people can’t afford the time nor the money to have children, then humans may either be a biologically enhanced breed that symbolize status for the rich… or a massified commodity whose only purpose is to sustain the economy, perhaps even on other planets.

So far, humans have spread across the Earth through sexual reproduction. It’s at the core of who we are as living things, what motivates us and even how our culture and economic machines develop, for sex relates to gender and the latter is entangled with power, identity, and cultural norms.

In 1984, it is mentioned that Big Brother exists not as a mortal human does, but as a supposedly immortal embodiment of the Party. Some say this as mirroring capitalism, or the algorithms and platforms (and biotechnologies) that serve it.

In a conversation between Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis (CEO of Deepmind and Isomorphic Labs), the space-tech entrepreneur was presumably appalled to realize that, even if he turns humans into an interplanetary species, AIs with political and cultural views that oppose his own will inevitably follow him all the way to Mars.

No technology is apolitical. Perhaps Musk will IVF his way to colonizing the red planet only with humans descended from him, and AIs that his companies develop. If reproduction is life’s greatest power, there is no reason our technocrats will not harness it. Brian Armstrong, founder of Coinbase, is already investing in companies in the space.

By the way, the fact that we can grow any biological thing in a dish or a tank, from teeth to tomatoes, means that it’s not only human reproduction that is at stake, but all of biology. Since AIs are becoming the essential Chief Growth Officers at these biotech companies, they will undeniably continue to exert control over organisms when they move to Mars.

Back to Earth 2025, biotechnology is turning the act of having kids into a rather commercial transaction. If I’m rich enough, in a couple of decades from now I may be able to buy my first kid using bitcoin through a BCI implant. I could send a sample of my cells, have them turned into stem cells that make an embryo whose genome I design before having it grown in an artificial womb.

As countries continue racing for technological supremacy, inevitably automating every human task possible through robotics and artificial intelligence, machines will become more human-like — with AI and biotechnology that can quantify every molecule in our bodies to optimize for longevity and productivity, humans will become more machine-like.

Perhaps the misunderstood implication of Julian Huxley and other transhumanists’ vision for the transcendence of the human race, is the literal process of our extinction before the machines, which as Gods we made to our own image, succeed us.

For now, since I don’t want to have us all buy embryos on some social media marketplace through some AR glasses, I urge us to start a counterculture of love.

Biology’s greatest “feature” has never been an eye color, fur texture, or voice tone. The most beautiful “feature” of life is the intangible and unquantifiable connection between two sentient beings that we call love.

It goes beyond the butterflies in the belly and a twinkling gaze. It could be love towards a friend, a spouse, a pet, a sibling, a father or a mother. Being present with them, seeing them smile and know they are happy, right here, right now is a kind of magic that Big Brothers may try to eradicate, but may never quite be able to engineer.

As we create new biotechnologies, I wish for us to keep this absolutely unscientific point of view in mind, for it will undoubtedly determine how we design, develop, and deploy them as culture.

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram! | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! We’re developing the next generation of military medicine to meet the operational demands of modern warfare—moving beyond theory and bringing biotechnology from the benchtop to the battlefield.

1. Astra Zeneca's at-home flue vaccine

FluMist was first FDA-approved as a nasal spray in 2003, but 13 years later, the CDC recommended against using it since it was found to be less effective than injectable vaccines. Last year, it became the first flu vaccine approved for at-home use, also marking the company’s first foray into D2C medicine.

As big pharmas begin to play in this consumer space, it’s time we talk about biotech UI/UX. Something as seemingly superficial as the delivery mode could impact consumer adoption, save distribution costs, while also demanding a different marketing strategy — Will we see nasal sprays for gene therapies soon?

2. Holmes' return

Elizabeth Holmes — yes, the former founder of Theranos who committed the biggest fraud in biotech history — has allegedly reopened her Twitter account, managed by someone else since she is currently serving an 11-year sentence in Texas.

Though it’s a bit early to know if there’s a larger PR strategy here, I wouldn’t doubt that some inspiration has been drawn from Jiankui He, the Chinese scientist who was also condemned to 2 years of prison for editing babies with CRISPR and is now a Twitter influencer with 140k followers.

While Holme’s post-prison plans cannot be confirmed yet, her husband Billy Evans has been public about raising $3.5M [from their millionaire friends and fam group] for yet another blood testing company, Haemanthus. The 10-person team has

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Genetic engineers remained blind to plants until the late 2010s, when similar genetic engineering efforts started in the autotrophs. Long time scales, heterogeneous cell types, and high polyploidy are only some of the technical challenges of plant engineering.

Meanwhile, plants account for 80% of all biomass on Earth, they are our carbon capture machines by excellence, the original source of most pharmaceuticals in the world, and the basis of all of agriculture.

For startups and academic labs alike, the fact that plant (genetic) engineering lags ~15 years behind other organisms means that the ocean is blue, and a green field lies ahead.

When engineered, plants can serve as low-cost, natural bioreactors for pharmaceutical and cosmetic ingredients, for textiles and functional food… they can fix more carbon from the air and produce more food and, in some weird cases, they can even be turned into digital data storage devices and metal mining machines.

The following is a Biopunk Tour of the Brophy Lab in Stanford, where they are building new genetic engineering tools for plants and their associated microbes, towards a sustainable future. Their PI, Jennifer Brophy, famously built the first logic gates in plants during her postdoc, setting a precedent for the Brophytes 🌱.

PhD student Vivian Zhong and Postdoc Alexander Borowsky were kind enough to answer lots of questions about their current work, challenges and opportunities in industrial plant genetic engineering, under- and over-hyped plant biotechnologies, and societal challenges of engineered plants.

• 00:00 — Inside the plant incubator

• 00:36 — Vivian’s work to overcome random DNA integration

• 01:30 — Alex’s work controlling gene expression in plants

• 02:10 — The Brophy Lab’s mission

• 02:40 — Overhyped plant biotech

• 04:00 — Underhyped plant biotech

• 07:50 — Why you should consider doing plant genetic engineering

• 08:40 — Public Perception & communication about GMOs

• 11:30 — Lab Tour: Plant Transformation & Screening

• 14:30 — Microscopy: Visualizing edited plant cells

• 15:00 — Building gene constructs on Benchling

• 16:15 — Bioengineering: for what purpose?

• 17:10 — Futuristic plant biotechnologies

More Biopunk Tours of companies, research labs, and perhaps whole biotech cities could be possible — If you’re interested in supporting this content as a sponsor, drop me a line via LinkedIn, Twitter, a Substack comment or message, or by replying to this email!

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram! | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! We’re developing the next generation of military medicine to meet the operational demands of modern warfare—moving beyond theory and bringing biotechnology from the benchtop to the battlefield.

☣️ BSL5

1/10: Tour of the Brophy lab

In another episode of BSL5, I visited the Brophy Lab in Stanford, where they build genetic engineering tools for plants and bacteria. This video includes a lab tour, as well as an interview with PhD student Vivian Zhong and Postdoc Alexander Borowsky on their work, hyped and underhyped plant synbio, and their perspective on ag biotech as an industry.

Stay tuned for the full release next week!

2/10: GPT coming to your brain in the 30s

The CEOs of OpenAI and Tools for Humanity will cofound Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface company. Nothing else is known apart from the fact that it may be valued at $850 million, still nothing compared to Neuralink’s recent $9B valuation.

To me, it’s no surprise that both Altman and Musk are playing in very similar stages. The human-computer symbiosis was first proposed by Martin Heidegger in The question concerning technology. What a privilege to be the generation that can make crucial design decisions that will literally change what a human is.

3/10: GLP-1 or just a scam?

EV1 is a peptide engineered to mimic the effects of both GLP-1 and GIP (Glucose-dependent Insulinotropic Polypeptide), delivered through a yeast probiotic. 30 capsules come at a $148 USD price. No human trials, no prior relevant research by the founder, no data except for some five-star reviews that really don’t say much…

Obviously, The weight loss pill is no small deal. Any big pharma that has GLP-1 agonists has a pill in the pipeline, and many related startups do too. In April of this year, Lilly’s oral GLP-1, orforglipron, demonstrated efficacy and safety in a successful Phase 3 trial. The small molecule was discovered by Chugai Pharmaceutical and was licensed by Lilly in 2018.

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>FASTA: weekly short reads of the global biotech ecosystem | Papers and patents, acquisitions and bankruptcies, biotech philosophy | Read in under 5 min | Follow on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram! | Versión en Español

Pilgrim is proud to sponsor >FASTA! We’re developing the next generation of military medicine to meet the operational demands of modern warfare—moving beyond theory and bringing biotechnology from the benchtop to the battlefield.

1/9: To become God or to create God

Humans use AI to select which genes to edit in all kinds of organisms, from plants to humans. We grant them control of cloud automated labs where these organisms are born from artificial wombs — In such dystopian world, we don’t become Gods; AI does.

2 out of every 100 American babies are conceived through IVF already. What most people don’t think about is that the sperm IVF selects for is different because they’re not traveling the same distance as in the fallopian tube. A 2019 study suggests that ICSI-conceived men may have impaired sperm production — Does this mean we will IVF ourselves out of existence?

🎙️ Biofounders episode with Michael Florea, cofounder & CEO of Olden Labs

2/9: AI-smart and low-cost animal cages

While the news says that organoids and simulations are making animal testing obsolete, that still seems far from reality in practice. Anywhere where you have multisystem interactions, you need a whole organism. Organoids and chips are expensive to maintain, and full organism modeling is still decades away.

Olden Labs builds AI-smart and low-cost cages with built-in cameras, microphones, wifi, and an AI-powered data platform so you know what your mice are doing all the time, at scale. In the first month of launching, they secured over 100 labs, companies, and institutions to sign up for their cages and they’ve already shipped over 40 Domes starting at $1,000 each.

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3/9: Gameto’s $44M Series C

Instead of hormone-pilling women to extract their eggs (causing undesired side effects), Gameto has engineered in-vitro maturation organoids from iPSCs to mature eggs outside the body. These ovaries in a dish reduce the protocol from 2 weeks to 2-3 days. Their product is already available in Mexico, Peru, and Australia, and is at the last phase of clinical trials in the US.

It’s interesting how the company is taking a platform approach, such that the same organoids they use to mature eggs can also be used to develop cell therapies that slow down menopause. They have already received $10M from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) for this research.

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Todays’ clocks are essentially oscillators of a highly regular physical process, like the vibration of a quartz crystal or the oscillation of a pendulum. But oscillators are also present in circadian clocks, heartbeats, and neural rhythms that regulate biological cycles. Time is has always directed how organisms age and evolve.

Today’s quantified self movement has spurred all kinds of devices to measure such cycles — REM-measuring rings, epigenetic clock tests, hormone testing devices — often aided by AI for interpretation and forecasting.

We, biology have outsourced introspection to machines that tell us how rested, young, or even happy we are. Instead of looking at our analogous biology itself, we look at digital numbers on a screen.

Tired of this enslaving approach, a rebellious biological watchmaker decides to bring biological time somewhere it can be seen as it is. The biological watch contains engineered cells from the user to project visible signals at every passing unit of biological time.

The International System of Units (SI) defined the second as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation of the cesium-133 atom, which quartz watches approximate.

The biological watch, instead, ticks at the cell’s own tempo. A neuron, an egg, gut bacteria, a stem cell, all tell a different story, as they ages. Unlike the silent ticking of a digital clock, the biological watch reminds the user of two deep truths about life: entropy and finitude.

Naturally, biologizing time means not only to make a strap out of mycelium. It is to understand, imbue with, and remind the user of what it means to be alive, including decay. It is an instrument for introspection.

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PS: this was a small creative experiment after reading a bit about cells that ‘can keep time’. If you have deep technical understanding that could bring this to life, I’d love to chat to write a better proposal.