IndieBio Will Accelerate Synthetic Biology To Tech Startup Speed

Can biology move at internet speed? Is there a Moores Law for cells? What about the problems that cannot be solved by information technology alone?IndieBio, a new biotech accelerator based in both San Francisco and Cork, Ireland, is proposing to answer these questions and more.

What a lot of people seemed to have missed is that the pace of innovation in life sciences is accelerating, sequencing technologies alone are exceeding the pace of Moores law, says Ron Shigeta, the chief scientific officer of IndieBio. Just as the falling prices and increasing speed of computer chips has made the present mobile device revolution possible, he sees the sameand morehappening in the biotech. If biotechs cost curve is exceeding Moores law in at least some areas, Shigeta wonders, how much quicker are we going to see a revolution in applied biotechnologies and what new technologies will we be able to develop within a couple of years which would could only dream of a decade ago?

At the same time, biological innovation promises to be more controversial than the purely silicon-based kindperhaps unfairly. The problem with biologyand its promiseis that we identify with it so strongly. Make a plant that glows by adding jellyfish genes? Thats unnatural! Make everybody show each other what they had for brunch? Thats Instagram! The dangers of data and networks are abstract and invisible while we consider GMOs in our food and contagious microbes in the air to be more palpable threats.

IndieBio co-founder Arvind Gupta is interested in intractable human problems that innovative bioengineering can solve, and in how to accelerate the process ofbringing these solutions to market. The development of exponential technologies like new biotech and AI hint at a larger trendone in which humanity can shift from a world of constraints to one in which we think with a long term purpose where sustainable food production, housing, and fresh water is available for all, says Gupta. The economics of biotechnology have fundamentally changed in recent years. After 30 years of booms and busts in the industry, the cost to do basic research and start new companies has come down by orders of magnitude. Gupta compares biotech startups totech startups and says, Its no longer 1999. Just as you now no longer have to build your own servers to launch a web business, fledgling biotech researchers can now buy their DNA instead of having to make it themselves.

One of the exciting things about IndieBio is the participation of Ryan Bethencourt, a veteran of the DIY biohacking movement and the co-founder of Berkeley Biolabs and other Bay Area and LA bio-accelerators. Bethencourt previously oversaw life sciences for Peter Diamandis XPrize organization. SOS Ventures, the $200 million VC fund behind IndieBio recently acquired Berkeley Biolabs team, Bethencourt and Shigeta, and brought them in to help build the next generation of biotech companies. Gupta is an investment partner at SOS Ventures, and you can hear echos of Diamandis optimism about technology-fueled Abundance (the Future is Better Than You Think) in his ideas.

Bethencourt, now the program director for IndieBios San Francisco program, sees the present surge in biotech as an analog to the 19th centurys industrial revolution. What started in the 1970s with the creation of the first recombinant human protein (Insulin) and grew into a $150 billion global industry has matured. The biomedical industry is standing solidly on established technology and novel new applications of applied biotechnology are now spreading out to everything else, from food to biomaterials to replacing old industrial processes, he says, the era of biology has finally arrived.

He sees three types of players that are now coming together to make this revolution happen. Stagnant funding for biomedical research has pushed many postdocs to take risks and flee the ivory towers. At the same time, open sourcebiohackers from outside the walls of academia have reimagined the basic tools of biology to lower cost and make them accessible to everyone. Finally,innovative investors, many who made their fortunes in tech, are willing to fund promising but risky new life sciences. DARPA, the government agency that brought us the internet, recently hosted an event titled Biology Is Technology, underscoring this promise, as well as the potential threats.Bethencourt and Gupta now see that it is possible to build biotechnology startups at an investment level thats competitive with app and software startups.

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IndieBio Will Accelerate Synthetic Biology To Tech Startup Speed