Ginkgo Bioworks, the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, announced the launch of a new cell programming project as part of a broader collaboration with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd, one of Japan’s leading chemical companies. Through this partnership, Sumitomo Chemical will leverage Ginkgo’s extensive codebase and expertise in organism engineering to produce molecules in a sustainable fashion that are used in products across a broad range of industries. The target molecule of this latest project is planned to be used in the personal care and cosmetic industries and is envisioned to augment or replace one that is otherwise currently gathered from animal sources.
By engineering a strain that will produce the targeted ingredient through fermentation, Ginkgo and Sumitomo Chemical aim to create products that will bring significant benefits to consumers by supplying an ingredient that is animal-free and more sustainable. This is a new project in addition to the companies’ existing collaboration, which began in 2021 and focuses on bio-based production of selected molecules for the broad Sumitomo Chemical portfolio which includes offerings from personal care and cosmetics to agriculture and pharma, and from chemicals to industrial products and more.
“The cosmetics industry is demanding more sustainable and cost-competitive beauty and personal care products, as are many others we serve, and we see tremendous potential in synthetic biology’s ability to make this possible at a commercial scale,” said Hiroshi Ueda, Executive Vice President of Sumitomo Chemical. “We’re encouraged by the progress of our ongoing first project with Ginkgo, and we believe it’s clear from how well our teams collaborate that we will also be able to find success within additional product areas as well. Through this project, we aim to build our own capability on fermentation production with, active involvement of our new organization SynBio Hub.”
“Not only is this project a natural fit for Ginkgo’s platform, but it provides the perfect opportunity to leverage and showcase our growing codebase,” said Patrick Boyle, Head of Codebase for Ginkgo. “Ginkgo has prior experience developing a precursor molecule to the one Sumitomo Chemical is currently targeting. The data and experience Ginkgo has on this precursor molecule has significantly accelerated our current program with Sumitomo Chemical, possibly saving Sumitomo Chemical multiple years off its development timeline.”
Ginkgo is building a platform to enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company’s platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo has also actively supported a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including K-12 pooled testing, vaccine manufacturing optimization and therapeutics discovery