Prolific Machines, a Bay Area firm, has raised over $55 million and uses light to precisely control cells. The technology originates from optogenetics, a branch of research that has applications in fields as diverse as neurobiology and farmed meat. A two-year-old technology developed by Prolific Machines allowed for the cultivation of cells for a variety of sectors, including farmed meat. The business, situated in Emeryville, California, announced today that it is prepared to enter the market with a bioreactor that will enable that expansion.
The company was founded in 2020 by Declan Jones, Max Huisman, and Deniz Kent with the goal of concentrating on more sustainable and effective methods of producing food and medication.
This would entail the growth and manipulation of cells without using costly recombinant proteins for the synthesis of cells.Today’s cellular biology processes are employed in the production of everything from nutritional proteins found in newborn formula to antibodies for immunotherapies.
However the cost of the molecular techniques is high—higher than the cost of a gram of gold. They are also challenging to manage. Kent used the example of cream dissolving randomly in coffee and moving around to illustrate how cells move when and where they like.
Furthermore, Kent noted that the procedures used now are not exact; the cell development you see today might not be the same tomorrow or a year from now. Furthermore, because cell growth occurs in a format that is not comprehensible by machines, it is difficult to optimize.
“We’ve been using molecules to control cells for the last few decades,” Kent stated. These molecules might be either chemicals or proteins. We fill the bioreactors with these chemicals and cross our fingers. Prolific Machines thinks it can move away from these molecules and toward light, which is a superior alternative. Today, light is employed for a wide range of purposes, from detecting pollution, as Spore.bio does, to producing food using microalgae, as Brevel does.
Most of those issues with cell proliferation are resolved by light, according to Kent. It is an inexpensive commodity that can be placed wherever you like, turned on and off as needed, and will remain the same in years to come. The light waves can also be divided for use in various scenarios. According to Kent, machines can comprehend light since it is nothing more than electrons flowing through a circuit board and into an LED. Customers may now more effectively biomanufacture high-value bioproducts such as disease-treating antibodies, nutritious proteins, and entire pieces of cultured meat thanks to the bioreactors from Prolific Machines.
The company sells genetic tools, which are basically DNA strands that can be made to do various tasks like removing growth factors or transforming one kind of cell into another by using light. Additionally, it provides cell lines, a Cho cell chassis for pharmaceutical applications, and a bovine cell chassis for culinary applications. Subsequently, the bioreactors are equipped with circuitry that detects the interaction between light and the cell. The optimal light pattern to use is finally determined by an algorithm in a software component that uses the spectral data.
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