Engineered cells and organisms could soon become the tools of the pharmaceutical and energy industries.
Eric Smalley
The Boston area is arguably the birthplace of synthetic biology. In the late 1990s, researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Boston University began thinking about how they could design and build novel cells and organisms almost from scratch using the principles that engineers use to build electrical circuits.
Now Boston is witnessing the rapid emergence of the synthetic biology industry. The area is home to several synthetic biology startups, a venture capital firm that is funding many of the fledgling companies, and the first biotech industry conference devoted to synthetic biology, happening this month.
More than a dozen synthetic biology startups have launched around the country in the last few years, many of them spinoffs from university labs. The technology’s many promises, which include lowering the cost of developing drugs, speeding up the analysis of pathogens, and enabling the engineering of fuel-producing microorganisms, are driving the rush to market. Even large companies like Pfizer and Merck are getting involved in this fledgling field.
“The big companies for the most part are just getting it on their radars,” said George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.
Starting up
The growth in corporate interest was apparent at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Jamboree, an annual competition featuring teams of undergraduate students from around the world. Held in November at MIT, it drew 400 students competing in 37 teams. It also had about a dozen industry sponsors. Of the nine judges, five were from companies and another was from a venture capital firm. It’s a sharp contrast to the event’s humble roots as a one-month MIT undergraduate class in 2003.
Startup companies angling for a piece of the synthetic biology market fall into two categories: gene synthesizers and applied biotechnology companies. Gene synthesizers, including Codon Devices of Cambridge, MA, and GeneArt of Regensburg, Germany, design and manufacture genetic material for customers in the biotechnology industry. Their aim is to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate than traditional genetic material suppliers. They also say they can produce longer stretches of DNA to order.
Other companies are devoted to creating microorganisms that cleanly and cheaply produce pharmaceuticals, fuels, and other industrial materials. Baltimore’s Synthetic Genomics, founded by J. Craig Venter of human genome fame, is developing microbes that cost-effectively generate ethanol and hydrogen. Amyris Biotechnologies, of Emeryville, CA, is working on microbes that produce a potent antimalaria drug cheaply enough that developing countries can afford it.
Big business
Larger businesses are also getting involved. Pfizer is slated to participate in a synthetic biology conference in Boston at the end of March geared towards industry. And the National Science Foundation-funded Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center counts among its industrial collaborators Cargill, DuPont, General Electric, and Merck.
Pfizer is looking to synthetic biology to address some of the problems inherent in the burgeoning field of biotherapeutics: treatments based on biological materials like cells and proteins. These materials have great potential, but taking them out of their natural biological context presents potential problems, ranging from the need for frequent dosing to safety concerns, said Jeffrey Chabot, a senior scientist at Pfizer’s Research Technology Center in Cambridge, MA.
“Synthetic biology traditionally ‘borrows’ from disparate components of biological systems and attempts to produce a novel system combining their desirable features,” said Chabot. “Some of the difficulties with biotherapeutics may be mitigated or avoided by such a novel combination,” he said.
Synthetic biology, he added, also holds the promise of therapies that can’t be produced from naturally derived materials. “Movements in this direction are beginning even now, both within Pfizer and externally,” he said.
Call for caution
The industrialization of synthetic biology is worrisome to some watchdog groups, including GeneWatch UK and the Canada-based ETC Group, given the history of public backlash against some forms of industrial genetic engineering. The promise of creating new organisms can raise public concerns about whether there is enough transparency and regulation in the way synthetic biology is used. Drew Endy, an assistant professor of biological engineering at MIT and a pioneer in the field, has led discussions about the safety and ethics of synthetic biology. So far, he says he hasn’t seen any irresponsible corporate behavior. “I don’t see any evidence of this now—quite the opposite,” he said.