Theia Biosciences LLC

We’re thrilled to announce the acquisition of AgBiome’s platform assets, including over 115,000 fully sequenced and isolated strains, over 500 million unique gene sequences, and relevant functional data and metadata, as well as AgBiome’s development pipeline. These assets will be integrated into Ginkgo Ag Biologicals Services, established with the acquisition of a Bayer agricultural biologicals R&D facility in 2022, and will expand Ginkgo’s proprietary unified metagenomics database. Combined, this creates one of the deepest and most advanced ag biological discovery and development platforms as well as a rich resource for the development of AI models for biological R&D. Since its founding in 2012, AgBiome has worked to generate an extensive collection of biological products and technologies – from agricultural products, to bioactive ingredients, to gene editing tools – through its Genesis Discovery Platform. AgBiome has successfully commercialized multiple biological products, including the Howler and Theia product lines, which are not included in the acquisition. AgBiome has developed a massive microbial strain library from over 8,000 geographically diverse environmental samples. These isolates have been fully sequenced, producing a rich library with over 500 million unique gene sequences. Also included in the acquisition is a robust product concept pipeline including a dozen product candidates with greenhouse or field validation – these validated assets create a rich foundation for future partnered programs, as well as a diverse resource of metagenomic data for genomic mining and AI model training. “We are so excited to bring AgBiome’s incredible strain and metagenomic collection into Ginkgo. This is a world class asset that will significantly expand our capabilities and can directly benefit Ginkgo’s customers in the ag biologicals space. In addition to the platform assets and capabilities, the product concepts pipeline that has been validated by AgBiome to date provides an exciting opportunity to give customers a head-start in their product development efforts.” “These assets represent a massive, ground-breaking investment into exploring and characterizing microbial diversity for human benefit, and we can’t think of a better home for them than the Ginkgo platform.

Sanofi made clear its AI am­bi­tions were re­al at the be­gin­ning of this year when the Big Phar­ma took its drug dis­cov­ery col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ex­sci­en­tia to the next lev­el, ink­ing a pact that could birth 15 drugs and de­liv­er $5.3 bil­lion to the UK part­ner. Sev­en months lat­er, the AI blue­print is far from over at the French Big Phar­ma, as an­oth­er of the much-hyped drug dis­cov­ery star­tups is com­ing to the ta­ble in a five-drug deal. Sanofi will pay Atom­wise $20 mil­lion to kick off the hunt for up to five tar­gets, which are aimed at lead­ing to the cre­ation of new small mol­e­cules. An­oth­er $1 bil­lion is on the line — as are roy­al­ties — and the com­pa­nies kept mum on the spe­cif­ic dis­eases or broad­er ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas of in­ter­est. The deal with Ex­sci­en­tia, an­nounced in Jan­u­ary , cen­ters on small mol­e­cules in im­munol­o­gy and on­col­o­gy. Sanofi, Ex­sci­en­tia ink the next AI megadeal, sign­ing terms on a $100M up­front pact with up to 15 drugs on the line “Not all AI is cre­at­ed equal and dif­fer­ent peo­ple are fo­cused on dif­fer­ent pieces,” Atom­wise CEO and co-founder Abra­ham Heifets told End­points News . He char­ac­ter­ized Atom­wise’s plat­form as a “sin­gle glob­al mod­el” that can ap­ply to what­ev­er pro­tein the com­pa­ny is work­ing on, as com­pared to “lo­cal mod­els” that oth­er com­pa­nies have de­ployed, mean­ing they need a new mod­el for each area, with EGFR of­fered as an ex­am­ple. “Our fo­cus has re­al­ly al­ways been about ex­trap­o­la­tion to nov­el bi­ol­o­gy to nov­el chem­istry to nov­el scaf­folds, so we can work on pro­teins where we have no train­ing da­ta [e.g. mol­e­cules that have al­ready shown ac­tiv­i­ty], we have no known lig­ands for that pro­tein, so ex­trap­o­la­tions of nov­el bi­o­log­i­cal space,” Heifets said. Heifets ac­knowl­edges his de­scrip­tions of Atom­wise’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties are “re­al­ly big claims,” but he’s “com­fort­able mak­ing them” be­cause of the “hun­dreds” of col­lab­o­ra­tions that the com­pa­ny has formed. Sanofi gets a col­lab­o­ra­tor that for years has been lin­ing up bio­phar­ma part­ners, like Eli Lil­ly, Bay­er, Mer­ck and Bridge­Bio. Spin­offs and joint ven­tures have al­so been part of the equa­tion, in­clud­ing Or­ganAi for Rett syn­drome, Theia Bio­sciences for vi­sion loss , vAirus for virus­es, X-37 for can­cer and oth­er in­di­ca­tions, among oth­er tie-ups. In re­gards to the JVs, Heifets said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to “make progress,” but Atom­wise’s de­vo­tion is to­ward in­ter­nal as­sets and deals of the Sanofi ilk. The com­pa­ny’s last pub­licly an­nounced cap­i­tal in­fu­sion was a $123 mil­lion Se­ries B in the first sum­mer of Covid, at which point Heifets said the goal was to build a port­fo­lio of small­er biotechs. Atom­wise’s ori­gins date back 10 years to work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, and the start­up kicked in­to gear dur­ing the Y Com­bi­na­tor pro­gram in 2015. Atom­wise has been qui­et on the fi­nanc­ing front since the Au­gust 2020 cap­i­tal haul, where­as Ex­sci­en­tia has beefed up its cap­i­tal re­serves through mul­ti­ple mas­sive heaps in the past 18 months, fu­eled by a $525 mil­lion Se­ries D in April 2021 and a Nas­daq de­but in Oc­to­ber of the same year. Com­pared to com­peti­tors, Atom­wise has yet to bring its pipeline in­to the clin­ic, with dozens of whol­ly-owned small mol­e­cules still in the ear­ly stages of work. Ex­sci­en­tia made it in­to the clin­ic with an AI-dis­cov­ered drug in 2020, a sim­i­lar claim that ri­val Re­cur­sion Bio al­so made in 2019, both com­ing with caveats to what it re­al­ly means to be de­rived from the work of AI.