A life sci­ences com­pa­ny just bought out two syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy com­pa­nies to add to its man­u­fac­tur­ing ar­se­nal.

Genome en­gi­neer and syn­bio out­fit In­scrip­ta put out word Wednes­day that it ac­quired In­fi­nome Bio­sciences and Ses­ti­na Bio to ad­vance In­scrip­ta’s strat­e­gy of de­vel­op­ing and com­mer­cial­iz­ing bio-man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts in a va­ri­ety of mar­kets.

Richard Fox

Be­fore the ac­qui­si­tion, In­fi­nome was af­fil­i­at­ed with In­scrip­ta — the for­mer de­vel­oped its pro­pri­etary strain en­gi­neer­ing plat­form us­ing In­scrip­ta’s tech. In­fi­nome co-founder and CEO Richard Fox said in a press re­lease that com­bin­ing the two com­pa­nies brings a “shared vi­sion” to­geth­er of scal­able and sus­tain­able so­lu­tions for bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing.

As for Ses­ti­na, the syn­bio play­er’s em­pha­sis has been on de­vel­op­ing a da­ta-based ap­proach from the out­set to build and iden­ti­fy strains that can make it out of the lab and be used in com­mer­cial scale-up op­er­a­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Ses­ti­na’s VP of R&D, An­drew Hor­witz, com­bin­ing Ses­ti­na’s ap­proach and In­scrip­ta’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties in genome edit­ing can re­duce the time and cost of bring­ing prod­ucts to mar­ket, ac­cord­ing to a com­pa­ny state­ment.

An­drew Hor­witz

While In­scrip­ta did not of­fi­cial­ly say how much it paid for the two biotechs, In­scrip­ta did raise $27.7 mil­lion on Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing.

In­scrip­ta did not re­spond to queries from End­points News. 

This newest ac­qui­si­tion re­flects the biotech’s broad­er push in­to its vi­sion of scal­ing and de­moc­ra­tiz­ing ac­cess to gene edit­ing. Af­ter $125 mil­lion in Se­ries D fund­ing in 2019 as it launched its gene edit­ing plat­form, the biotech re­ceived an­oth­er $150 mil­lion from in­vestors in a 2021 Se­ries E for its en­gi­neer­ing plat­form.

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