Is Ginkgo Bioworks worth $ 15 billion in synthetic biology stories?

“It must be a good time for a young biotechnology company to write unrelated journal-style articles without hiring people,” he threw Dirk Haussecker, a wise biotech stock collector who is active on Twitter.

Kelly says the magazine was inspired by Think, A print magazine started by IBM in the 30s. “Why did they do that? Well, no one knew what a hell of a computer was, ”says Kelly, who sees Ginkgo playing a similar role as an evangelist to get genetic engineering opportunities.

During a podcast, Reporters at Stat News reported comparing Ginkgo to a “meme stock” or “stonk,” regardless of the basics of the business to attract people who invest in the public. When the SPAC deal ends — sometime in September — the company will trade with the “DNA” stock symbol, which Genentech, the first hero of the biotechnology scene, owned. “Ginkgo Bioworks doesn’t deserve to use a DNA ticker,” said stock reporter Adam Feuerstein Stat.

They are SPACs The Wall Street trend which offers an IPO pathway that is slightly less than the usual analysis of a company’s financial forecasts. Will Gornall, a professor at the University of British Columbia business school, believes investors can democratize access to hot sectors, but can also overestimate the value of companies. Some agreements, for example Which took over from the public space company Virgin Galactic Holdings of Richard Branson, they did well, but five electric car companies listed through SPAC were later hit with what Bloomberg called “wild”Corrections.

Gornall can see the logic of the bet in Ginkgo’s bet. In recent years, stock market profits have been boosted by a few tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft – each now worth more than a trillion dollars. “Assessment can make sense if biology is a 1% chance of being the computer of the future and it’s the company that achieves that,” Gornall says.

Products of others

Since its inception, Ginkgo has spent nearly half a billion dollars, much of it building laboratories equipped with sophisticated laboratory tools such as robots, gene sequencers and mass spectrometers. These “foundries” can test genes added to microorganisms (often yeast) or other cells. It says it can produce 50,000 genetically modified cells in a single day. The typical goal of a foundry project is to find out which of the hundreds of versions of a particular gene is good, for example, for converting sugar into a specific chemical. Kelly said customers can use Ginkgo’s services instead of building their own lab.

What is missing in Ginkgo’s story is the result of his research service. “If you’re labeling yourself as‘ synbio ’, that will put you at a high level of success, you’re saying you’re going to the moon,” Koeris says. “You’ve raised so much money against a wonderful approach that you soon have to be a transformative product, a drug or a crazy industrial product.”

So far, Ginkgo’s yeast cell engineering has led to the production of three odor molecules, Kelly says. Robert Weinstein, president and CEO of U.S. flavor and additives manufacturer Robertet, confirmed that his company is now fermenting these two molecules using yeast designed by Kelly. One, gamma-decalactone, has a strong peach scent. The other, mason lactone, is a clean liquid normally isolated from the bark of a tropical tree; used as a flavoring, it can sell for $ 1,200 per pound online. Fermentation per year can generate the value of this million-dollar chemical.

George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School, says such products still don’t live up to the promise that synthetic biology will transform manufacturing a lot. “I think flavors and smells are a far cry from the point of view that biology can do anything,” says Church. Kelly also sometimes struggles to reconcile the “disruptive” potential she sees for synthetic biology with what Ginkgo has achieved. The church caught my attention May report at the Boston Globe About Ginkgo joining the Soaring Eagle. There, Kelly said his business was an attractive investment because the world was discovering the extraordinary potential of synthetic biology, citing covid-19 vaccines and animal-free proteins made in RNA messengers in new plant burgers, like impossible. Food.

“The article was a list of achievements, but the most interesting achievements were those of others,” says Church. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to add $ 15 billion to me.” However, the Church says Ginkgo hopes to succeed. The company is not only his “favorite unicorn” he acquired the remains after the success of some of its synthetic-bio startups (it also recently sold to the Zymergen company). How Ginkgo behaves in the future “can help our entire area or hurt our entire area,” he says.

Although Ginkgo’s work has not been very successful, and Kelly admits that it takes “so much time” for biotechnology to be “frustrating,” she says other customers ’products are coming soon. The Cronos cannabis companyIt is in Canada that by the end of the year, it will sell drunken-flavored drunken candies that will be a molecular component of the marijuana flower that contains CBG; Ginkgo helped show how the sample is made in yeast. A spin-off of Ginkgo, called Motif FoodWorks, he says he hopes to have a synthetically created meat flavor available this year as well.