Solugen's announcement of their conditional loan from the DOE is one of the most encouraging pieces of synbio news I've heard in a while. I don't know the full details, but this type of financing indicates they sufficiently proved the repeatability/scalability of their forges. For an industry that's been plagued with issues involving scale-up, this is a pretty big deal. Congrats Gaurab and Sean! If you want to learn more about Solugen's story, you can check out my piece on them from last year: https://lnkd.in/ghaQqr87 It's interesting to note that one of the synbio companies most aggressively scaling is based on cell-free technology. Niko McCarty and I covered this in our piece on alternatives to fermentation-based bioproduction: https://lnkd.in/g_7-eW3G Finally, I think this is a really interesting example of financing the development of new facilities with non-equity instruments once the TEA and feasibility at scale have been validated. More on this concept here: https://lnkd.in/gib4TTMc
Thanks @ElliotHershberg! This definitely isn’t a silver bullet for the industry given how bespoke bio manufacturing can be, but it begins to create a risk management framework to assess these projects for bankability.
I agree! A nice step forward. Congrats to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for their work in growing the bioeconomy and helping it scale.