The Synthetic Biology Mashup is a weekly review of articles and news related to synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. While we share most of this on our twitter feed, if you need to catch up on this week’s news just read ahead!
Immunity Project Receives Support from Y Combinator for Free HIV Vaccine Development
The technology accelerator Y Combinator has provided financial support to a new pharmaceutical company focussed on developing an inhalable vaccine against HIV called Immunity Project. Studying people presenting a natural resistance to the virus, the company has identified critical amino acids in the virus to target with a vaccine. Immunity Project aims to make the vaccine available free world-wide and is using crowdfunding, instead of firm investments, in order to raise the necessary $482,000 to complete the animal trials.
First Kit to Detect the Majority of Commercialized GMOs
Amidst the Genetically Modified (GM) food debate, scientists from Shanghai Jiao Tong University created the first kit to detect the vast majority of commercialized GMOs in a single test. The MACRO (Multiplex Amplification on a Chip with Readout on an Oligo microarray) system covers 97% of all GM events that have been commercialized up to 2012, with high specificity and high throughput. With apprehensive customers and regulatory bodies we can expect to see more of these kits in the near future.
Renewable Energy Group Continues to Grow with the Acquisition of LS9
The U.S.’s largest biodiesel producer, Renewable Energy Group (REG), announced that it will acquire the synthetic biology company LS9 (now called REG Life Sciences) for up to $ 61.5 million assuming a certain number of milestones are reached. LS9 premier product is its UltraCleanTM Diesel which they produce from feedstock using synthetic biology tools. The company has been struggling lately with a number of scale-up challenges and with raising capital. REG has now quite a diverse product portfolio from first-generation biodiesel and heating oil, all the way to advanced biofuel recently with the acquisition of Syntroleum and now with LS9. Make sure to read the interesting column in the Motley Fool.
That’s it for this week’s Synthetic Biology Mashup! A suggestion or a question? Shoot us an email!
