BiologIC Technologies’ biocomputer.
We live in a world where computers can power the entire world wide web, create music and art, and even write college essays. But when it comes to taming biology, we have not been able to take full advantage of the power of computational technologies yet. BiologIC Technologies, a company out of Cambridge, UK, wants to bring disruptive innovation to biomanufacturing with the world’s first biocomputer, an integrated and programmable system that can be adapted to multiple applications from performing lab testing or making cell therapies.
BiologIC’s CEO and Chair, Richard Vellacott, sees enormous potential in biotechnology: from growing cell-based foods that have a much lower environmental footprint to bringing more affordable drugs to people. The big question is – why have we not solved these problems yet? Vellacott thinks this is due to a productivity crisis in biology labs that is preventing biomanufacturing from reaching its full potential.
This diagnosis is based on substantial industry experience: before BiologIC, Vellacott served as the CFO
CFO
While the advances in computational technologies over the last 70 years have scaled exponentially according to Moore’s law, drug discovery has followed the reverse trend of becoming slower and more expensive over time. This pattern, referred to as Eroom’s law (Moore spelled backward), is why developing cures takes so long and why when drugs finally hit the market, the price tags can run up to millions of dollars.
BiologIC hopes to reverse Eroom’s law by integrating Industry 4.0 technologies – such as automation, artificial intelligence, and cyber-physical interfaces – into biology workflows to make bio labs much more efficient. Inspired by the invention of the integrated circuit that drove the information revolution, the biocomputer is a paradigm-shifting system that can power up the bio revolution:
“The last 70 years’ has transformed the world in terms of information technology. We can take all of that knowledge and apply it to a physical process, like biology,” thinks Vellacott. “That will allow us to completely transform biology workflows.”
The tyranny of numbers in biology
Biomanufacturing promises to change the entire world’s economic model. McKinsey estimates that 60% of physical inputs into the economy could be made with biology, and Vellacott agrees: “Extraction mentality is just not sustainable,” he is convinced. “We can use biology to feed, fuel, heal, build, and compute. We can create completely new industries that are much more sustainable.” But scaling biology from lab bench to population scale requires transformational changes in just about every process, from research to manufacturing.
In the 1960s, computer engineers faced a problem known as the “tyranny of numbers”. Back in the day, computers were built from a series of modules, each performing a single function. To build a simple circuit, several modules had to be connected, and as operations got more complex, more and more components had to be used, imposing a limit on designs. The invention of the first integrated circuit was a turning point for computational technologies: problems that once required complex modular designs could now be solved on one circuit board, enabling every tech application we know today – from smart watches to space missions.
Today biotechnology is facing the same problem: every process in the complex ecosystem of biotech and biomanufacturing is split up into many different operations. Those operations use isolated workstations, expensive specialized equipment, and sometimes different facilities entirely. BiologIC Technologies wants to change that by combining them into the world’s first biocomputer.
The biocomputer is essentially a “lab-in-a-box”: it contains the hardware used in every bio lab and the software to operate it. It can be easily re-programmed to run different applications from manufacturing food to growing cells for cell therapies. To create these custom devices, BiologIC maps out each process a lab performs, encodes it into automated operations, manufactures custom-made parts using 3D printing, and combines them into one integrated system.
The result is the most simple yet versatile biomanufacturing system in the world: the device can move liquids, monitor cell growth, add in required nutrients, filter and extract useful products – all the while generating a lot of process data to understand how biology is performing and improve the process in real-time. The biocomputer combines dozens of lab equipment pieces into one integrated system where the different components communicate and work together to control the entire process.
Building bio-factories of the future
This transformative approach to managing biology workflows can generate impact across many sectors. The Industry 4.0 technologies make biology labs more like factories and can give the synthetic biology industry the missing edge to transform bright ideas into biomanufacturing solutions: “Businesses that fully understand and capture the advantages conferred by Industry 4.0 will be best positioned to create value from the opportunities that lie ahead,” thinks Vellacott.
BiologIC Technologies works with companies to develop custom devices for their specific applications. The company has recently partnered up with the UK’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), which brings together academia, businesses, government, and investors to translate ideas into products. The center acts as a catalyst for effective innovation by providing customers with access to the right experts, equipment, networks, funding, and more:
“As a partner to many leading innovators, CPI is in a unique position to leverage world-class expertise and to take businesses from innovation to commercialisation whilst investing in the future business leaders,” said Frank Millar, CEO of CPI. “Over the last 18 years, CPI has developed into one of the largest and best resourced innovation centres in the UK.”
BiologIC Technologies currently has two major biocomputer projects with the CPI, one in mRNA vaccine manufacturing and another in antibody therapy.
“Having collaborated closely over an extended period, we are impressed at the speed of execution and commercial traction of BiologIC. We see strong advantages in BiologIC’s biocomputer system and the ability to increase bioprocess productivity relative to the competition in the sector. Richard and the management team have built an impressive business and we are delighted to support and contribute to the business as it enters an exciting new phase of growth,” said CPI’s CEO.
Making life-saving medicines affordable and more
One of the goals of BiologIC is to democratize healthcare with the ability to manufacture therapies in remote environments or places that do not have the infrastructure to do so. The biocomputer could power distributed biomanufacturing: by installing these devices in hospitals, one could make essential therapies right where they are needed and bring them to people much faster.
For example, BiologIC’s technology can be used for manufacturing vaccines in emerging infection hot spots. One of their first clients, Oxford Biomedica, makes the components for AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccines and cell therapies. The company has partnered up with BiologIC to advance the development of viral vectors. Oxford Biomedica is using the new technology to make their process more reproducible and to test more ways of inserting DNA into cells, helping speed up the development of new vaccines.
But this is just scratching the surface of what a fully autonomous, end-to-end manufacturing system can do. Vellacott thinks that the biocomputer could even power long-range space expeditions: “The integrated circuit really transformed the space program. And, by analogy, that’s exactly where we’re at with doing biology in space. You can’t have “one box – one job” type of system because then you’d be sending thousands of different boxes up to satellites or Mars. You want one box to do many jobs: it can grow your food, make your medicines, purify the air, et cetera,” envisions Vellacott.
It may seem out of reach for now, but it only took 66 years to go from the first airplane flight to the Moon landing. The biocomputer can build an entire ecosystem of applications – both here on earth and out in space – to lead to the bio revolution in the same way that computers have revolutionized our lives. The sky is the limit.
Thank you to Katia Tarasava for additional research and reporting on this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.
