Most large accelerators are likely to dedicate a few of their sources to dauntingly laborious science issues and the businesses taking them on… however for SOSV’s IndieBio, it’s the first focus.
Final time we checked in with IndieBio, their firms have been engaged on every part from lozenges to deal with gum illness, to vertical farms for the sustainable manufacturing of shrimp, to saving the bees.
Whereas IndieBio’s subsequent Demo Day continues to be just a few months out, the businesses of their subsequent New York batch have been chosen and are already chipping away at an entire new set of issues — issues like battling opioid dependancy, bettering crop yields amidst local weather change, or making higher/safer leather-based options from stuff we’d in any other case throw away.
I hopped on a name with IndieBio NY’s Chief Science Officer Julie Wolf, who instructed me a bit about what every firm on this newest New York batch is engaged on. Right here’s my understanding of every firm within the new class, in alphabetical order:
Ceragen: Making a microbe-based “inoculant” that improves crop manufacturing in hydroponic greenhouses, utilizing helpful micro organism to assist crops improve warmth resistance, battle root rot and extra. The group says they’ve seen yield will increase of as much as 20% in tomatoes (suppose extra fruit, not greater fruit.)
HelEx: Constructing what they name an “an clever GPS for gene-editing” to allow quicker, safer improvement of CRISPR-based gene therapies.
Inso Bio: Constructed by a group out of Cornell, Inso is engaged on dramatically simplifying the method of genomic sequencing and pattern processing — taking what Wolf calls a “multi-step, excessive contact” course of that “requires lots of lab personnel” (and is thus typically backlogged for months inside any given lab) and turning it into a bit of {hardware} that handles all of it.
Picture Credit: Kinoko
Kinoko Labs: Entire-cut meat options (suppose steaks and cutlets as an alternative of nuggets and burger patties) grown/constructed from fungus, utilizing fungal mycelium to create a meat different with style/textures extra like that of precise meats. The corporate at present has each rooster and steak prototypes in improvement.
Kutanios: Engaged on a peptide-based product that, when utilized topically, would assist forestall injury/ageing attributable to the solar — all whereas being biodegradable and protected for the surroundings. One of many founders is Dr. Norman Miller, a scientist greatest identified for co-authoring a 1975 speculation on HDL’s function in defending towards coronary heart illness — in different phrases, for locating that there’s such a factor as “good” ldl cholesterol.
Kyomei: Wolf tells me that this group is engaged on rising meat proteins (myoglobin) inside crops at scale, which might be extracted and added to plant-based meat-alternatives to “give them that umami style.”
Pannex Therapeutics: Trying to fight the ever-worsening opioid epidemic, Pannex is engaged on what it expects to be a non-addictive painkiller. The corporate’s web site says its drug (PNX3) “docks to Pannexin 1 channel and blocks it” — regulating one of many methods the mind processes ATP as ache.
RizLab Health: Antibiotic-resistant “superbug” bacterial infections are terrifying, and the overuse of pointless antibiotics solely makes the scenario worse. A spin-off out of Rutgers, RizLab is engaged on an in-office/transportable machine for speedy CBC exams that may assist a health care provider shortly decide if an an infection is viral or bacterial — thus, hopefully, halting the tendency to throw antibiotics at every part.
Picture Credit: TomTex
TômTex: Leather-based options constructed from seafood waste — they’re turning issues like crab or shrimp shells into chitosan, a biodegradable polymer which they’re then in a position to flip into cheaper but extra sustainable options to leather-based. The group has already gained quite a few awards from teams together with LVHM (the holding co. behind firms like Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Christian Dior, and so forth.)
Upright: Engaged on “oatmilk as nutritious as dairy,” utilizing concentrated oat protein (slightly than extra generally used issues like pea protein or soy protein) to maintain it hypo-allergenic.
