As lead­ing syn­bio play­ers bask in spot­light, US/Chi­na start­up lands $100M to find its own niche

Tim Lu’s MIT lab is known for push­ing the bound­aries of biotech. Whether it’s En­gine Bio­sciences’ AI plat­form or Sen­ti Bio’s ge­net­ic cir­cuits, it’s all about cre­at­ing new ther­a­pies that can “out­smart” com­plex dis­eases through in­tri­cate tin­ker­ing of bi­ol­o­gy — and some­times cre­at­ing things that no­body has made be­fore.

But the il­lus­tri­ous sci­en­tist is al­so keen to bring those cut­ting-edge tech­niques to tra­di­tion­al in­dus­tries, where he be­lieves syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy can of­fer bet­ter ways to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts that oth­ers have pro­duced for years.

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