IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is gearing up to introduce its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We noted several startups making ambitious, nearly ludicrous claims that could yield significant advancements.
Biotech has gradually extended its reach to adjacent industries, revealing how much these fields depend on outdated methods or organisms. Thus, it’s not surprising to see a microbiome company in this new batch, but you might be surprised to learn it focuses on the microbiome of copper ore.
Speaking with IndieBio’s chief science officer, Wes Dang, about the standout companies, he assured me that despite sounding far-fetched, these startups are serious, and IndieBio conducts extensive verification.
“We all have technical backgrounds, several PhDs included — we conduct due diligence together. We review the papers and some of us delve deep into the figures and assumptions,” Dang explained.
Stream Genomics is perhaps the most straightforward of the new group: a genome sequencing method and device that surpasses the market leader, Illumina, in speed and cost-effectiveness, significantly reducing the need for labor-intensive wet-lab preparation.
Although there are cheaper sequencers, Illumina’s entrenched position makes switching costly unless savings extend beyond sequencing. Stream Genomics’ method minimizes sample prep and reagent use (their sequencing isn’t cyclic) while offloading computational tasks to the cloud, promising dramatic increases in speed and cost reductions.
“With Stream, you observe nucleotide incorporation in real-time, tracking the colors of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs, without excessive computational demands,” Dang remarked. “It’s like streaming versus downloading a Blu-ray.”
Illumina’s market dominance may remain, but smaller operations might favor a quicker, simpler sequencing option over outsourcing or building an expensive sequencing lab.
AquaLith, another startup, intends to revolutionize battery technology with a silicon anode material that resists long-term degradation. Although we covered them last year, they plan to sell the material to battery manufacturers who can integrate it into their existing production processes. “Basically a slurry,” Dang described, which AquaLith produces exclusively.
Battery startups have emerged and faded for decades, with few achieving notable success. However, AquaLith addresses a specific issue in an otherwise stable domain and plans to develop a nonflammable battery cell soon. Here’s hoping their efforts succeed.
Farm Minerals launches with a marketing stunt: offering its synthetic fertilizer free for the first million acres. “They’re doing it as a flex,” Dang said. “It’s just incredibly cheap to produce.”
Fertilizer is a significant farming expense, but crops only require a fraction of its minerals. Farm Minerals encapsulates these minerals in a bioavailable carbon casing, claiming that 160 grams can cover — checks notes — 2 million hectares?!
“As a scientist, I was skeptical,” Dang admitted after my similar reaction. However, their research confirmed its feasibility. This means the giveaway, about a cereal bowl’s worth of product, might be sufficient. The jug shown could be enough for the entire country. We’ll seek independent validation of these claims soon.
Transition Biomining may be the most sci-fi of the companies, attempting to “squeeze life out of a rock.” Conventional methods can extract only so much of the minerals from raw ore, but Transition aims to push this further by leveraging microbes.
The company studies and modifies the microbiome of rocks so that microbes extract minerals naturally. This won’t replace traditional mining methods but could complement them by improving mine efficiency.
Here’s a brief overview of other companies in the batch:
- Able Sciences: Self-amplifying RNA to lower cell therapy costs.
- Bryosphere: Age spot treatment made in a moss cell reactor.
- Hypercell: Quick, simple food safety testing for industrial facilities.
- Nutrition From Water: Low-carbon whey from aquaculture.
- SpiralWave: Plug-and-play cold plasma methanol reactor.
- Reactosome: Gene delivery via a supplementary nucleus (!).
- Rybodyn: Characterizes unknown proteins from the “dark proteome.”
- California Organic: Organic ammonia supplier through fermentation.
- Cereswaves: “Electrofertilizer” boosting crop and animal growth with an energy field (?).
- Oxyle: Mechanical(ish) PFA removal from ground and waste water.
We’ll follow these companies as they progress toward their ambitious goals. The San Francisco–based incubator’s demo day in June will likely offer more insights.
