Every once in a while, we’ll come across a company with an absolutely wild mission.
“That’s incredible,” we’ll think…
“But how could it possibly be a successful business?”
That’s what most people think when they hear about Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences.
The company’s mission is to develop genetic editing technologies for de-extinction. Its primary target is to bring back the woolly mammoth to life.
Source: Thomas Quine
As crazy as this sounds, the company has been making incredible progress.
Colossal performed a genetic analysis of 121 different mammoth and elephant genomes.
Doing so enabled the Colossal team to reconstruct the genome of a woolly mammoth and understand the genetic traits that made them so well-disposed to extremely cold climates.
Published in Nature this morning is some incredible research that outlines how Colossal edited seven genes in mice embryos at the same time… to create an entirely new species of mice that exhibits traits of the woolly mammoth.
Most visibly we can see the hair on the mice below indicative of the same kind of coat of a woolly mammoth.
Colossal calls this “new” species of mouse the Colossal Woolly Mouse.
Two Colossal Woolly Mice | Source: Colossal
Now, I know that this all sounds crazy. And it probably looks like a weird and perhaps unnecessary science experiment to most.
But to dismiss these latest developments at Colossal – or the company itself – would be a massive mistake.
Colossal’s founder is one of the pioneers in genetic editing technology, George Church of Harvard.
Church and the Colossal team have demonstrated something extraordinary… the ability to understand how multiple genes interact with each other and result in specific physical traits – phenotypes.
Better yet, this analysis enabled the team to genetically engineer these traits in mice, a step towards recreating an actual woolly mammoth, which is on track to be done by 2028.
Imagine that, a herd of live woolly mammoths within the next three years.
But to what end?
Is the purpose to build an actual Jurassic Park? That is one possible outcome.
Colossal is already targeting the de-extinction of the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo in addition to the woolly mammoth. It’s not a stretch to imagine dinosaurs may be on the drawing board.
It’s easy to get distracted by these fantastical possibilities, though, when looking at what Colossal is doing.
The most ironic part about this story is that very few understand and talk about the “real” work Colossal is doing.
This company has the potential to be one of the most important biotech and genetic engineering companies of our time.
De-extinction may be the headline story, but Colossal is building a computational biology software platform that will have immense utility in the industry – a platform to enable what Colossal refers to as no-code biology.
Imagine a platform whereby biologists and geneticists can simply drop in genetic data, have it analyzed by the system, couple that data with generative AI platforms like DeepMind’s AlphaFold to determine protein structure, and then design a CRISPR genetic editing guide able to deliver the desired DNA sequence to the right location in a genome…. All without having to be a software programmer.
The point is to simplify the process of genetic analysis – and ultimately genetic engineering – for drug and therapeutic discovery.
Colossal’s technology is designed to accelerate drug development and to use its software for genomic analysis for cancer screenings and other forms of genetic research. The market opportunity for this kind of technology is at least $100 billion.
Colossal’s multi-gene editing technology, which has already proven effective in the Colossal Woolly Mouse, can be used for the same purpose with human DNA.
The team at Colossal is also working on reprogramming induced pluripotent stem cells, which have incredible promise with regard to regenerative medicine.
Or equally incredible are the efforts to develop a vascularized artificial decidualized endometrium (i.e. an artificial womb).
I remember some research along these lines back in 2017. It created quite a bit of buzz when researchers were able to create what they called a “bio-bag” to enable prematurely born lambs to continue to grow and develop until they could survive on their own.
Source: An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extremely premature lamb, April 25, 2017
Naturally, this technology has great utility in husbandry (breeding of animals). That’s a business in itself.
But consider this…
About 10.4% of all births in the U.S. are premature, and preterm births are the number one cause of death in children under the age of five. The addressable market for artificial wombs is at least $20 billion.
Again, de-extinction might be the crazy mission that most people talk about, but the underlying business opportunities for Colossal’s tech are incredible.
Colossal has already spun out a couple of companies from its own research:
And if I had to guess, Colossal will spin out a company focused entirely on developing the artificial womb technology given its clear commercial applications in both husbandry and human preterm applications.
Meanwhile, there is some very smart money that sees the economic and life-changing potential of what Colossal is doing…
This January, Colossal raised $200 million at a $10.2 billion post-money valuation, making it the first Texas startup to become a decacorn (a private company with a $10 billion valuation).
These rapid advancements in genetic engineering are going to light a fire under genetic sequencing companies like Illumina (ILMN), Oxford Nanopore Technologies (London: ONT), and Pacific Biosciences (PACB).
Sequencing will not only be required to “feed” the computational biology and artificial intelligence systems for learning and discovery, they’ll also be needed to confirm the accuracy (or not) of the complex genetic edits made with therapeutic applications.
The potential of genetic editing is unbelievable…
A world without any disease caused by unwanted genetic mutations.
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
