51. Cell-Free, Problem-Free: Enzyme Alchemy with Alex Rosay at Cascade Biocatalysts

[00:00:00] Karl: Hey, Rem. What's going on?

[00:00:01] Erum: Hey, Carl. It's going. Spooky season is in effect.

[00:00:06] Karl: Well, so it's the beginning of October for our listeners at the Grow Everything podcast, where we talk about how biology is changing all industries. And yes, fall is here. but we, in the Northeast, we haven't quite reached,peak foliage unless you've been, super far north.

[00:00:23] Karl: I haven't seen it yet. Have you?

[00:00:25] Erum: Yeah, right outside my window.

[00:00:26] Karl: Oh, really?

[00:00:27] Erum: Not peak, I would say. Just a little bit of yellow. That's it.

[00:00:31] Karl: Well, we know Halloween is coming, so what's your Halloween plan?

[00:00:35] Erum: I don't know yet. My son's five, and he's like, and this is breaking my heart, but he's not really into Halloween, and he's like, "I wanna be a soccer player or a basketball player," which is like, he just wears those clothes every day, so it's nothing unique.

[00:00:47] Erum: And so it's... I'm just like, "Oh, don't you wanna be like an astronaut or, a pilot or like Spider-Man?" And he's like, no." So it's really sad.

[00:00:58] Karl: You guys can go as a soccer team. That would be cute.

[00:01:01] Erum: That's so boring.

[00:01:03] Karl: Boring to you, but he'll be excited by it.

[00:01:05] Erum: Oh, that's true. I guess the holiday's for him. But it's for me, too. I'm so selfish.

[00:01:11] Karl: Okay, but what about the candy and the colors and the coatings and the sugar?

[00:01:16] Erum: I don't know. I mean, so like it- my son's school, it's a nut-free school, I think they... dairy-free as well in terms of, being able to share different foods, so that takes out all the chocolates, but leaves all of the, very sugary candies that aren't dairy.

[00:01:32] Erum: So, all of the like Skittles and different candies, which, as a kid it's cool, but like I remember being a kid and like the variety, And the nutrients coming from a Snickers bar like 'cause it has peanuts, but...

[00:01:46] Karl: Yeah. I have these pictures of my kids. Like I always took pictures with the booty after, meaning like what they collected, because our neighborhood is like a crazy neighborhood for trick-or-treating.

[00:01:58] Karl: And so like I have this one picture of Felix laying down on the floor surrounded with this halo of candy. It's just amazing. But did you hear about like the Gatorade news?

[00:02:09] Erum: No. What's going on there?

[00:02:10] Karl: So apparently Gatorade is being pulled off the shelves in both New York and New Jersey because the food dyes have been unidentified, and this kind of plays into our whole color series, color for food particularly.

[00:02:23] Erum: Wow. Yeah. That's insane. I mean, looks like there's different decisions happening in states across the United Stateseven though federally things are still underway. But it's interesting to learn a little bit more about, why, first of all, those food dyes are unidentified, or that seems a little odd to be able- for these companies to put products out without identifying specific ingredients, but maybe it's, just the label has a, kind of catch-all term versus exactly what the molecules are.

[00:02:56] Erum: And if there's, a gray area, we don't want it. So, is this the new way forward? It's like if you don't disclose specifically where your ingredients are coming from or how are they made, we're just gonna decide to get it off the shelves. And I wonder, how much of a, jab that is to Pepsi, who makes Gatorade.

[00:03:13] Erum: what do their Gatorade revenues look like now?

[00:03:15] Karl: Yeah, we'll have to check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes because I just saw the headline and I was like, "Okay, we need to talk about this." There's a couple of other, like, news items that I thought I would bring up. did you hear about this team of biologists who was working out of a motel room and discovered a really interesting bacteria?

[00:03:33] Erum: What is going on?

[00:03:36] Karl: Yeah, so apparently this team, they lost their funding, because a lot of scientists have lost their funding, so they started working out of a motel room, I think in Maryland. And what they discovered was this bacteria called Paulinella, which apparently can provide a window into a crucial event in the development of complex life.

[00:03:55] Karl: So this is, like, apparently a bacteria that, shows what happened when a single cell organism swallowed a photosynthetic bacteria, and instead of it digesting it, repurposed it into its own personal energy factory.

[00:04:09] Erum: Wow, that's insane. I mean, good for the scientists, but at the same time I don't know if they're allowed to be doing that, you know?

[00:04:19] Erum: like the biosafety levels. so I'm kind of concerned for the motel. Does the motel know about this? But-

[00:04:25] Karl: Yeah, you gotta see the pictures. It looks like a motel room with a bunch of microscopes in it.

[00:04:30] Erum: Yeah, I see it.

[00:04:31] Erum: There's like... one of the scientists are on the bed, like with their computers, and there's vials around them, and, This is so bizarre, because on one hand I love the can-do effort. Yes. Right? That's wonderful.

[00:04:43] Karl: Community science all the way.

[00:04:44] Erum: Yes, community science all the way, yes, but at the same time, a motel room, it's already ick, right?

[00:04:50] Erum: So first of all-

[00:04:52] Karl: Yeah. ...

[00:04:52] Erum: what kind of bacteria and cells are just floating in the ether in that motel room?

[00:04:57] Karl: So- I don't

[00:04:57] Erum: want to

[00:04:57] Karl: know.

[00:04:58] Erum: Yeah, and so, like, is that creating variables around this research? But, very funny. I hope that they're okay and safe. I hope they don't get in trouble.

[00:05:07] Erum: That's kind of my... where I'm coming from. Look for like those, abandoned warehouses. I don't... where exactly was this again?

[00:05:14] Karl: I think in Maryland.

[00:05:15] Erum: Yeah, so there must be some type of abandoned industrial, like facility.

[00:05:21] Karl: Yeah, but I think it said $80 a night in this motel. So it's hard to beat that.

[00:05:25] Karl: That's cheap. But you're right, who knows what else is floating around in there.

[00:05:29] Erum: yeah. They should have broke it into an old factory and just set it up. That's kind of seems like a great start to a sci-fi movie. The motel is more like, I... That's not exciting to me. That's kinda cringe.

[00:05:43] Karl: Yeah. Okay, so also speaking of bacterial discovery, did you hear about this Inc洗衣amova cascadensis?

[00:05:52] Erum: Oh, Inc洗衣amova cascadensis. I love that microbe. Never heard of it.

[00:05:57] Karl: I knew you would say that. So apparently this microbe, was just discovered, and it's able to grow and divide at 63 degrees Celsius or 145 degree Fahrenheit, which is the upper limit for eukaryotic life. I mean, 145 degrees Fahrenheit, I don't even know if any place on the planet gets that warm.

[00:06:18] Karl: This was something that was identified, you know, in a really hot place. So the fact that this bacteria can live and grow and divide there is amazing.

[00:06:27] Erum: Yeah, yeah. looks like it was discovered in a geothermal spring, where a lot of interesting things are discovered. And, extremophiles are so interesting, especially from a biome manufacturing perspective, because if you can domesticate those extremophiles and they can make different products- You don't need to necessarily, like sterilize as much because other microbes can't really infiltrate that environment.

[00:06:55] Erum: So if you create a very hot geothermal like bioreactor and this microbe is just doing its job, it's cranking out whatever you need it to crank out, that's great. And you can even like start exploring, what we call dirty biology or just you don't have to do all of the sterilization that's cost a lot of money for some, biomanufacturing processes.

[00:07:20] Erum: And I think, something we can talk to Henry Lee about when they're looking at domesticating non-model organisms, and it's great. I would love to see, who's taming the beast, who's taming the Incendia Mo- amoeba cascadensis. We need better names. We need nicknames for these microbes, but we'll come up with that later.

[00:07:42] Erum: The fire microbe.

[00:07:43] Karl: yeah, I look at it and it looks like amoeba fire or igniting amoeba from the cascade. Like that's what the name looks like.

[00:07:52] Erum: Something with dragon. Can we use something that's the micro dragon? I don't know.

[00:07:56] Karl: Yeah. All right, so there's two more kind of news items that I just wanted to cover before we get into today's episode.

[00:08:03] Karl: we always talk about AI, and AI, has been accelerating so quickly. Iram, you're getting a lot of hands-on experience in your how to biomanufacture almost anything class using AI, particularly Claude. And,I want you to talk about that, but did you see this discovery that, Claude agents identified a previously uncharacterized reverse transcriptase enzyme system that works a lot like CRISPR?

[00:08:31] Erum: Oh, yeah. I saw rumblings of this, but ... That's helpful for bioengineering?

[00:08:37] Karl: Yeah, I mean, CRISPR is like a, cut, paste, replace type of system. it's of course a lot more complicated than that, but there's a lot of tools that have been built around CRISPR to make genetic engineering much easier, particularly in vivo.

[00:08:52] Karl: And so adding this new system that was discovered through Anthropic, I think just expands the toolkit for CRISPR. I'd love to hear other CRISPR experts correct me on that, but that's the way I read this news.

[00:09:05] Erum: Yeah. it's incredible just to see how much scientific discovery's happening. I know I've seen, this post, by a publication called Evolving AI where, AI solved like 10 unsolved mathematical equations in a week.

[00:09:21] Erum: It's like ridiculous. so the rate at which this discovery's happening is fascinating. and yes, I would love to know what model of Claude was used for this because there's many, and in my own experience, I was using Opus 5 to try to understand how to create DNA constructs for making nanocellulose.

[00:09:44] Erum: very harmless experiment. I'm not trying to make viruses or anything crazy, right? So this is very simple, but then I would get the block saying, "Sorry, Opus 5, you can't be talking about bio. You have to reframe or go to Sonnet." So I'm like, okay, so now I'm using Sonnet 5, I guess, for a lot of my conversations and kind of going down my, genetic rabbit holes.

[00:10:08] Erum: but it's interesting 'cause,I wanna know the difference between, Opus 5 and, Sonnet. Like, is Opus 5 just more crazy and, like, that one's not as tame as Sonnet? like, what makes a model fit for doing biological research versus not, And is it because, Opus could go crazy and go rogue or whatever? I don't know. I'm, now I'm, like, pontificating here. and also, like, it's interesting because yes, these models are trained on certain data, and they have access to certain information, and there's Claude Science that has... It's also there.

[00:10:42] Erum: And Claude Science is great because it has, like, 100 databases, probably more than that by the time you guys listen to this, that it can access all the different, like, PubMed and all this research that it has access to. But the way it converses is actually kind of condescending in a way. but it's okay.

[00:11:02] Erum: Wow, I didn't know that. it's very interesting- Yeah ... 'cause, like, so, I... And I think I mentioned this before, but I use Claude Sonnet, and then I use Claude Science, and I play them off each other. So I, fact-check, Claude Sonnet or Claude Science calls it Other Claude.

[00:11:15] Erum: So Other Claude is, like, the regular one that we all use, and then Claude Science. So then I just fact-check, both of them. And actually, Claude Sonnet or Other Claude does get a lot right, and, it might not have the specific information which Claude Science can get because it has access to those databases.

[00:11:34] Erum: So when I would go back and forth, there'd be times where Claude Science was like, "Oh, actually Other Claude is right about this. That's a better way to frame it. That's a better experiment. Oh, I didn't see that." and then, Other Claude or Claude Sonnet would be like, "Here's my assumptions.

[00:11:48] Erum: Why don't you ask Claude Science to look up a paper to see if these numbers are correct?" So it's interesting to play off of those two, but you know what? That's just because, I'm just using those because I've been exposed to Claude and Anthropic's tools for a while. There are so many specific ones that are being developed that have higher fidelity data when it comes to, biology and doing different science experiments because we need more, real world, real time physical AI data versus all this information that's been in papers that we've collected over years.

[00:12:23] Erum: That's just, that's good, but it's not enough.

[00:12:26] Karl: Yeah. you talked about AI accelerating research and,I think your experience with it is, like, amazing because it's like I'm learning a lot just from hearing you talk about it and experimenting a little bit on my own. But speaking of things moving quickly, these guys at a company called C5R said that they built an AI-operated research facility in 12 weeks, which they then introduced.

[00:12:50] Karl: It's called PsiUniverse, and the idea is to be able to measure AI performance in real world experimental tasks in biology, chemistry, and material science. Like 12 weeks to build something that would've been unimaginable just a few years ago.

[00:13:06] Erum: Yeah, wild. It-- That, this stuff is so wild. This reminds me of the story that happened last year where like this 12-year-old made a fusion reactor in his bedroom using Claude or something.

[00:13:17] Erum: But yeah, this is what is happening. I mean, I need to dig into this, but it's more like, how are they doing it in a, secure way? what AI are they actually using? Are they using Claude 2 or something else?

[00:13:31] Karl: I don't know what model they used. We'll have to dive into it a little bit more.

[00:13:34] Karl: I think it could potentially really interesting people to bring on the podcast because we do talk about AI as an automation tool, AI for, remote labs, AI for capturing the way scientists work through, and we've got some of those episodes coming up.

[00:13:48] Erum: Yeah, exactly. And we need to talk to Jason Kelly at Ginkgo because they're doing a lot of lab automation, which I will probably use in a few weeks.

[00:13:57] Erum: Let's see. but it's all about experimentation on the very, nano, micro scale to see what, can happen on that level because you're trying to program on that level. But then, you kind of just stop after the lab. Like you, can't really do much

[00:14:12] Erum: But the scary thing is if they're trying to make viruses or something. But if they're trying to make materials, which is this, C5AR is, looking at material science, that's a different beast. It's safe. But, an experimental lab is very different than a prototyping lab, which is different than like a prototyping manufacturing lab.

[00:14:33] Erum: so it's a far cry from, really where we need to get to in order to like actually touch and feel and use the output of these experiments. but it's great, that they made that. I'd love to know what kind of, tools they have and equipment they have in those labs.

[00:14:51] Erum: I mean, I saw the video really quick, but, a lot of experiments are, in liquid. but that's, the first part of it, and then what happens like after. Like, and so in my world, I'm looking to make a dry product, so there's a, whole adventure to go from the liquid small scale to the larger dry scale, and it's like, what?

[00:15:12] Erum: but here we are. So a lot's going on, and we love to have our finger on the pulse and see what's happening. Yes, on these like fringes and this, on the edge of biology AI and science and collaboration and everything, but there are big organizations and companies that are moving now, and they have to go from the opposite side, where there are established products, there's established processes, and then they need to go backward to see what type of innovation they can bring into these large organizations.

[00:15:48] Erum: And that is what we saw at BioInnovations in Omaha, and you went to Houston for an investor conference that was related to BioInnovations. Shall we talk about that, Carl?

[00:15:59] Karl: let's first talk about what the difference was between Omaha and Houston real quick. it would make sense that this event was held in Omaha.

[00:16:07] Karl: I think BioInnovations has done it two or three years in a row at Omaha. And, Omaha is the farm belt building side, the supply side. It's the pilot plants, it's the feedstocks, it's the ecosystems. And really the question being asked in that room was, how do we scale the infrastructure to make this happen?

[00:16:28] Karl: the other side of it, the side event, which was in Houston, was really much more about the opportunity, the tailwinds, the valuation, the financing. and the question there that people were talking about is, where does the money go, and why is now the moment? So let's talk about some of our key takeaways,from these events.

[00:16:47] Erum: _let's talk about it. Here we go. _

[00:16:49] Karl: so I think the way we organized today's episode was to really talk about different points that we got there. the first point we wanted to talk about is this idea that discovery is getting cheap.

[00:17:00] Karl: I mean, we just talked about AI. And so as a result, deployment is the whole game. What does deployment actually mean, Iram?

[00:17:09] Erum: All right, so let's talk about Bio Innovations and what we saw there, and, Bio Innovations is an amazing conference that brings together people from all over the world, actually. We saw people from different countries descending to Omaha September 9th and 10th this year, and they really want to learn and talk and discuss and share how to commercialize products and how to build the bioeconomy.

[00:17:35] Erum: And these were companies that range from the Cargills, ADMs and the, international flavors and fragrances companies, to innovators that are making new types of bioreactors, that are setting up pilot facilities, and then everyone in between. there was also a side conference that you went to in Houston that was really focusing on investment in this space and how you can create different financial models to fund the growing bioeconomy, and it was great to see people engage with each other, speak, make deals,and get started.

[00:18:09] Erum: Karl, why don't you share a little bit about the difference? I didn't get a chance to go to Houston, but would love for you to kind of give us the difference between these two events, and you can talk about what we saw at the conference.

[00:18:21] Karl: Yeah, I mean, let's just look at it geographically.

[00:18:24] Karl: Omaha's, the middle of the country, it's the farm belt, it's supply side, it's pilot plant, it's feedstocks. It's one of the advantages that the United States has over any other country. It's like 90 million acres of corn. It's also facilities pull it, put already,creating ethanol. most US gasoline has ethanol in it, and it comes from the corn that we grow.

[00:18:47] Karl: and then on the other side of it, Houston is really capital markets looking at the opportunity. What are the tailwinds? What are the valuations? What's the financing? Where's the money gonna go? And the question that people were really trying to answer there is where does the money go, and now is the moment.

[00:19:04] Karl: Veronica Breckenridge, who's been on this podcast twice, just mentioned that valuations are really low, which makes, but the bioeconomy and biotech, industrial biotech a very compelling investment right now.

[00:19:16] Erum: that is right, and, we have Omaha. It is the US corn belt, and corn, of course, has been the cheapest, most abundant industrial feedstock but it could be made into other feedstocks and to make different products, not just, food and ethanol, but there's so much more that can be made.

[00:19:36] Erum: so let's start talking about some of our key takeaways. I mean, It was incredible to have these conversations one-on-one and also hear from the panelists and the presenters on what they're seeing. And so Karl, what's something that you took away?

[00:19:55] Karl: So we started off talking about AI, and we talk about AI a lot on this podcast.

[00:20:00] Karl: We have to because AI is touching everything, just like biology is everywhere. But one of the things that got mentioned is the fact that discovery's getting cheaper, but deployment is still the challenge, and it really ends up being the whole game. What does deployment actually mean? It means being able to go from that bench scale to, like, producing hundreds of millions of liters in a location like somewhere in the Midwest with the feedstock that's available.

[00:20:25] Karl: our friend Moji Karimi, who's been on this podcast, he said, we thought that, discovery was the breakthrough, but we should've been more focused on deployment." So, one of the things that he mentioned was this idea that downstream processing, which we know is very expensive, is one of those places where people under-invest.

[00:20:42] Karl: What was your take on this idea, Iram, of discovery being commoditized?

[00:20:48] Erum: Yeah, and I think, something to point out is what is discovery? we're discovering what, you know?are we discovering some type of novel, biological process? You know,we were talking about the new type of CRISPR system earlier.

[00:21:01] Erum: or are we discovering a solution to a problem? And that's what we're talking about when we talk about discovery, that there are problems abound, all across industry, in our environment, in our health. So how do we come up with a solution? And of course, we have experts all around that can help come up with a solution, that are human.

[00:21:26] Erum: But then now we have experts in our pockets that can come up with a solution. And so yes, discovery is cheap. It's because it's easy now to come up with the solution or generate a solution, if you wanna think about it like that. but then what? Carl, you and I were talking about it, and we're talking about, oh yeah, we have this...

[00:21:45] Erum: You could come up with these strategies and stuff, and like it's still... You'd still need,experts to make sure your strategies and your ideas are sound so you don't just trudge through and break things, right? and you're doing things in an efficient way.

[00:21:57] Erum: But execution's everything. How do you execute? and how much will it cost you to execute? And how do you do it in a cost-efficient way that is also good for the planet, good for people, everything so we're seeing this, and I think as the listeners listen to other people talk about, where's AI going, it is like the big conversation was like, well, it ate up all the internet, So it knows everything on the internet. It has a- access to all the papers. but it needs to learn what's happening in the real world, in the physical world. And when, Moji talked about deployment, and we've talked to him many times, is like, well, let's take energy industry, for example.

[00:22:38] Erum: how does drilling happen? Like, what are the problems with drilling that, energy companies face? How do you s- solve those drilling problems? And, is there a better way to do it so it doesn't leave, like, so much devastation in that environment, that you can do some precise drilling?

[00:22:56] Erum: And that's looks like one part of a real thing that's happening right now. so what's a solution for that specific thing? And drilling is like... And I'm saying it as a catch-all because we've learned that there's so many specific points of drilling, and each of them might even have a small challenge that can be tweaked to fix that whole situation.

[00:23:18] Erum: and I'm talking about drilling for fossil fuels, of course. not, But this also applies to mining and everything, and how are we, extracting and taking resources in a way that's smarter. and when we do that, how do we capture that information and share it with AI so it can come up with, faster solutions?

[00:23:37] Erum: And what's that, DBTL look like, in the real world? how do we do that? And of course, we talk about experiments, 'cause a lot of biology happens in the lab, but it also happens in the real world, so we need to be able to get that information, in a way that's smart, and can be in- informative when we use these AI tools to then come up with better ideas.

[00:23:58] Erum: something that we'll talk to, a lot of people coming up on our podcast, but one company I wanna, give a shout-out to and tease is, Transfer AI with, Anna Marie Wagner and Renee Wesrigin. I hope I said her last name right. and they will be talking more about physical AI and what that looks like.

[00:24:18] Karl: okay, so the, kind of the next point I think that stood out to me was this idea of the missing middle.

[00:24:24] Karl: when we think about,biomanufacturing, the beginning is really the bench. Then you go to pilot, and then maybe you have a demonstration plant, and then you go to full-scale production. And the missing middle is where good science dies. it's like when you're at the bench, you might not really be thinking about what deployment looks like.

[00:24:42] Karl: how are you gonna take that bench scale and turn it into hundreds of millions of liters of a product? And,

[00:24:49] Karl: one of the panels that really impressed me was this panel that was about iFAB.

[00:24:53] Karl: And iFAB is this ecosystem that covers incubation through scaling for sale that is in southern Illinois, and it has over 100 members, including Kraft Heinz. And for me, this is a real-life example of building an ecosystem in a very compressed area, 50-mile radius. fantastic panel and fantastic story.

[00:25:16] Karl: Iram, what was your take on this one?

[00:25:18] Erum: Yeah. my big takeaway is this idea of creating a consortia and being able to bring all the players from the lab all the way to scale in one place and have a adult conversation, right? Adult human conversation. And, a lot of this comes down to, okay, how do we go from that leap you mentioned and cross the chasm or the valley of death that everyone talks about, which is like, okay, that term's overused if you are in this world.

[00:25:51] Erum: But someone, on the stage mentioned the valley of do. Don't call it the valley of death, call it the valley of do because then you start learning what you need to do, and that is coming up with a phased plan and phased plan not just to execute to make the product, but a phased plan to connect all the people that are required in order to get that product to be scaled.

[00:26:14] Erum: And so we mentioned iFAB, and, Heinz being a part of this, which is a corporation. but also, infrastructure players like Primion. we're gonna have Primion on and they have a pilot facility. I'm sure Biomeit is somehow a part of this, They're also spinning up pilot facilities to go from the lab to, a respectable quantity to prove that your products can be made, and there's so much, right? there's the drop-in replacement chemicals that, replace current petrochemical-based products, that might be even higher performing, to the super novel ingredients for, personal care, beauty, nutraceuticals, and there's so much to be done.

[00:26:59] Erum: But we really need to have that infrastructure and just I love this idea because this idea of iFAB and these regional innovation, groups is that we all need to, work together, and it just, I hope- This doesn't sound like, kumbaya, like let's work together, peace on Earth, but it's more like, no, this is strategic.

[00:27:24] Erum: It is also the new moat, right? If AI is commoditizing discovery and, you can, come up with a strategy, generate the strategy, not even come up with it, then what, right? You're going to need people to execute upon different parts of your strategy, and that's all going to be about who you know and the resources you can get.

[00:27:47] Erum: So this is the perfect conversation to have because it's missing, so we need to know who's going to make that missing middle, and we see it happening in the US Midwest. it's also happening nationwide through BioMADE. but, we need more wins across the board, across the whole country.

[00:28:08] Karl: Yeah, and I would just say, I think we maybe mentioned this in a previous episode that Bioinnovations, had representation from most of the Midwestern states, so there are people there from Indiana, from Minnesota, from South Dakota, each building their own, pilot facilities to enable this kind of scale-up.

[00:28:26] Karl: And, in Houston, Biobased Europe, which has a pilot plant in Ghent, said they were shopping for a US site in the Midwest because they realize how important the Midwest is with, the Corn Belt, the Soybean Belt, and that feedstock that's gonna make it possible for us to really scale up biomanufacturing in a way that is gonna be way more cost-effective when you're trying to, build commodity products or even build, products that maybe don't need, hundreds of millions of liters, but those innovative products that you're talking about.

[00:28:56] Karl: But having the feedstock nearby, and this is something we're gonna talk about in future episodes, is really gonna make a difference from a cost point of view.

[00:29:04] Erum: Yep. Yep. And then, another takeaway that's, kind of dovetails, into our point is this idea that, again, an invention is over.

[00:29:15] Erum: There's actually ... And this is a funny story, I was talking to my friend Ed, and, he was just talking about science, and he was going dough deep into it, and I was like, "Science is over." I'm just joking. Like, we were just joking. I mean, it's not over. but then like, he's moving and he's like,older and has had acquired, accumulated so many different books and magazines and he's moving, and he heard something in his place, like a, something fell down.

[00:29:40] Erum: And he goes, and there's like a stack of magazines that fell down, and he saw this magazine, it was a Wired magazine from 2008 that said The End of Science.

[00:29:49] Karl: Oh, wow. I'd like to read that again.

[00:29:52] Erum: And he was like, "Oh my God, you just said this yesterday." And like, I never heard of it, but apparently I did so many years ago.

[00:29:58] Erum: And it's like, okay. And then the way that it talks about it, it talks about big data. Remember that? Remember big data? so but if you just replace it with AI, which now by the way is called super intelligence. It's not artificial anymore.

[00:30:13] Karl: Yeah.

[00:30:16] Erum: It's like it re- it just is a drop-in for this article.

[00:30:19] Erum: And then, I mean, I have to share this magazine with you. It just, every page is so good, Carl, 'cause it's like- I gotta

[00:30:25] Karl: read it,

[00:30:25] Erum: yeah ... it's like the nostalgia algorithms and you're like, wait, how do ... Like, this is crazy. But anyway, back to the idea of like, okay, it's not invention anymore. It is, again- whose job is it to build the ecosystem, We're doing it in our own way here on Grow Everything and at Messaging Lab, but we need to have everyone involved, the corporates, government, and who moves first? is it the government? Are they the innovators? Is it C5AR, who we talked about in the commentary? this ragtag group of kids making, an AI-enabled l- physical laboratory.

[00:31:00] Erum: Virtual lab, yeah. Yeah, like who's doing it? And it, the answer is everyone, but who's doing it in a smart way?

[00:31:07] Karl: Yeah. And I think one other point on this, from two people that we ended up talking to. One is that the money's there. there's a lot of money floating around.

[00:31:15] Karl: Abhijit Ganguly of Tech Ventures said, corporates want to see that there's an ecosystem in place before they invest. So if you're building that ecosystem in advance as you're developing the lab innovation, that's gonna make you a lot more fundable.

[00:31:30] Karl: the other thing that,we talked about in Houston was about business model innovation being needed. Like, you and I are talking a lot about infrastructure. We're talking about the importance of personal relationships, that's the new moat.

[00:31:43] Karl: But business model innovation, and this, again, is something we've talked a lot about on Grow Everything, is that there's a lot of opportunity for biotech companies to come up with unique business models. And,

[00:31:54] Karl: corporates and funders are looking for unique business models. So what does that mean? Do you have a business model that already shows that, you've got customers on the other end?

[00:32:02] Karl: I think that might be one of the easier business models to have. It's a little bit traditional, but you've got that customer on the other end. But maybe there's ways that you can pre-sell your product before you even get it to, scale. you do see that with digital products or limited d- edition products where people start a waiting list.

[00:32:19] Karl: We haven't really seen that in biotech, but I think that's gonna come

[00:32:22] Erum: My favorite part of the conference was hearing from the corporates and how they are setting the terms. And we heard from Gregory Hocking of Mars and Keith Marisoneski of Smuckers, and they were both in fireside chats. And the big thing is they both actually had a very similar approach to when it comes to bringing innovation in and how they look at innovation.

[00:32:50] Erum: they both are companies that are making food products, which of course they wanna bein Omaha at the center where there's corn, there's the feedstocks, there's all these products that can be made. Mars on the one hand, candy and snacks. Smuckers not only makes jams, but they have acquired Hostess and other, different snacks as well.

[00:33:12] Erum: So they're looking for innovation when it comes to natural colors, functional proteins, even sweet proteins, so sweeteners, because you can't have candy if they're not sweet. And both Greg and Keith are responsible for exploring innovation. And when Greg was speaking, he did an amazing job.

[00:33:34] Erum: I talked to him after he went on stage, and I was like, "That was a master class. Thank you very much." And he talked about being clear with innovators on what they're looking for. So there's this idea of demand clarity, like how much are they looking for when it comes to specific products? And spec clarity, specifications.

[00:33:57] Erum: What exactly are they looking for? Because these ingredients have to be pre-formulated to go into a formulation, right? So when you're thinking of colors, well, those colors are going into different types of products, whether they're hard shell candies or, icing or whatever it is, right?

[00:34:17] Erum: So they want to be clear. Like, they wanna remove this challenge that a lot of innovators have when they tr- are trying to make these ingredients is directionality. Like, what exactly should they make based on the, their platform? Because their innovations are so upstream, how do they get it downstream to a place where a customer will purchase it?

[00:34:43] Erum: he talked about how they prioritize different ingredients. for example, with Mars, of course they make a lot of chocolate candies, and the business case that, Greg was talking about is whey and cocoa price volatility. And, his advice to innovators, which is something we talk about a lot and we just talked about on this episode, is you have to build those relationships early.

[00:35:08] Erum: and he's talking not just to founders, but even to other corporates. Yeah, you have to meet the startups where they are. you can't just be like, "All right. I need, 10,000 kilos of this. Good luck. Bye." It's like, that's not how this is going to, lift all ships, right?

[00:35:26] Erum: and then I just wanted to point out, I had a conversation with Keith after the panel, but he really talked about, what they actually were looking for when it came to colors, and that was a great conversation, and they both talked about, thinking of the consumer first, right?

[00:35:39] Erum: These are CPG companies. They think about the consumer first. And when they hear of a new innovation, like a new type of whey protein that is, manufactured, whether it's biomanufactured or some other type of methodology, how do they talk about it on the label? And so they, Greg in particular talked about the Mars exercise of talking about a new type of whey as animal-free whey, and that caused a lot of confusion, right?

[00:36:11] Erum: they tested out this term, the marketing team came up with this term of animal-free, and people didn't even know that whey came from animals, so they were like- Yeah ... "Wait, what is this?" Right? Like, and, like, animal-free is like, okay, like, there needs to be a little bit more homework around that in term- for the marketing team because it's like, w- what...

[00:36:29] Erum: Can you share a little bit more about that? And people aren't buying products 'cause they're animal-free, Like maybe- Yeah, at least not yet ... the dairy-free or something like that. You're like, yeah, that's not the term right now, right? so I really, appreciate that, and it's really cool to see how these, corporates are partnering with different programs.

[00:36:47] Erum: So I did wanna give a shout-out to Gregory Hocking of Mars and their collaboration with the Unreasonable Group, where they created the Unreasonable Food Accelerator, and they're in their third cohort. So, in each cohort was about 13 companies, and so we'll have to have him on and talk about, what they're looking for when it comes to food innovation and when we talk in the context of growing everything.

[00:37:10] Erum: And another amazing thing that happened at Bio-Innovations was your panel, Carl, which was a great topic to discuss, which is the idea of scaling before you raise capital or even build anything. Like, how do you do this? How do you model scale? And I would love to hear from you some lessons. and what was your panel about in particular?

[00:37:32] Erum: What was the title?

[00:37:33] Karl: Yeah. So the panel was called "Strategies for Scale-Up: Successes and Pitfalls to Avoid." And it had a really great set of panelists who had never actually been on a panel before. And it was really amazing because the conversation we had was really about, you know,what are big companies doing to help startups, and what are things that startups can learn from other people's mistakes?

[00:37:56] Karl: So the people on the panel, and it's a shout-out to these guys, Steve Bray of Triton AG, Philip of, Roebling, and we've done several episodes with Roebling, and Synynym before its name change. Mike Glasspool of Merrick, and Kyle Pomerang of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And what they really represented was people who are developing strains, you know, so that's Kyle and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and preparing those strains to go from bench to scale up.

[00:38:26] Karl: And then on the other end of it, you really had like Steve Bray of Triton AG talking about what does it take to take that innovation and scale it up big production. Mike and Philip were really talking about what does the process engineering look like from there. Philip of Roebling was really talking about how does AI help, think through what a process could look like, how do you build a facility based around that, which is the live demo that we did with Roebling a few episodes ago.

[00:38:53] Karl: So why don't we let Steve Bray talk about how Triton helps startups?

[00:38:59] Karl: why don't we let Philip talk about how Roebling's product can help a startup with their scale-up thinking.

[00:39:08] Karl: Let's have Mike Glasspool of Merrick AG talk about the reality of building a facility.

[00:39:14] Karl: and let's have Kyle talk about what is it like to create organisms that have never been scaled up before, like what does that look like?

[00:39:23] Karl: But at the end of the day, the panel really emphasized, early feasibility checks, hands-on tech transfer, thinking about downstream processing and how expensive that is, and, closing advice.

[00:39:35] Karl: As simple as it is to say, it's this idea of designing with the end in mind, which is really what Kyle emphasized, and then finding the partners who will fill the gaps, which is what Mike Glasspool said. This really fits into what we've been talking about in terms of orchestration and ecosystem building.

[00:39:52] Erum: Yeah, and speaking of the end in mind, we were also-- there was a big lesson from this conference was the idea of waste to value, right? So there's no end. It's just a nice circular innovation economy, right? So, part of that was, and where we, really talked about that was during the Shark Tank portion of Bio-Innovations.

[00:40:15] Erum: So a lot of in-innovators hit the stage, pitched, there were judges, and it was incredible to see the in-innovation that came from these companies. so one company that I wanted to point out was this company called Chemvera, which takes surplus corn ethanol and makes it into acetic acid, which is a top 10 platform chemical.

[00:40:36] Erum: And the way that the founder was describing it was he really knew what was going on in the market. Like, he saw what was going on in the market, he saw an opportunity, and then he built a company. He wasn't like, "Oh, I'm pontificating, like, this innovation, and perhaps we could make a company out of it.

[00:40:55] Erum: I don't know." This was clearly a problem solution fit and, definitely a clear winner.

[00:41:02] Karl: and just in case you didn't know, The United States does produce a surplus of corn ethanol. So again, Convira's CEO or founder really realized that, ethanol could be turned into bioacetic acid, which is a top 10 platform chemical.

[00:41:15] Karl: ethanol becomes a precursor to bioacetic acid, which in turn becomes a precursor to a lot of other chemicals, and the innovation is this ability to take that corn ethanol and turn it into something that gets used across the chemical industry.

[00:41:29] Karl: I thought the presentation was amazing. He did a great job

[00:41:32] Erum: And I would say one of the big points from this conference being held in Omaha in the United States was that our bioeconomy in the United States is a sovereign story. Bioeconomy as a national security priority. And we had people talk about the Office of Biotechnology,

[00:41:56] Karl: the importance of the bioeconomy was really made clear by, a number of speakers across both, a- across all of the bioinnovations event. And, Jenny Ligon suggested that this, the bioeconomy, is so important that there should be an office of biotechnology in the executive branch, just like there should be an AI or super intelligence office in the executive branch, and it seems like we're actually moving towards that right now.

[00:42:23] Karl: another thing that was talked about that we've spoken about here on the podcast is the BioPreferred program, which really tried to get the government to do a lot more purchasing of bioproduced products. That program has kind of ended because it was on a funding cliff, but someone suggested that this be expanded to the states because the EU and Japan are also doing procurement programs that are based on that model, and they're trying to get more people to buy bio-based products.

[00:42:52] Karl: and then finally around that same, topic of the bioeconomy and how important it is, I can't remember who it was that pointed out, but, we've had the National Security Commission for emerging biotech on. They've talked about American Delivering Libraries Act. But JP Morgan, the huge bank, has a $1.5 trillion security and resiliency initiative, which is really focused on funding infrastructure, which is what we've really been talking about this whole episode.

[00:43:19] Erum: Is that funding biomanufacturing infrastructure?

[00:43:23] Karl: Infrastructure across the board, and so it has to include biomanufacturing because that also requires a lot of funding.

[00:43:30] Erum: But does it?

[00:43:32] Karl: I can double-check just to be-

[00:43:35] Erum: Yeah, 'cause, that's a big thing then if there's money going towards biomanufacturing.

[00:43:42] Erum: Otherwise, it's like not really relevant, I mean, that's huge if JP Morgan is putting $1.5 trillion on security and resiliency initiative.

[00:43:52] Karl: Yeah. it doesn't explicitly name, biomanufacturing. It's about supply chain defense, energy independence, and frontier technologies.

[00:44:00] Erum: Yes. So it-

[00:44:02] Karl: It does include pharmaceutical precursors.

[00:44:06] Erum: Yeah. So, you know- Have they decided how the $1.5 trillion is going to be deployed? And if they have some wiggle room, "Hey, JP Morgan, we have an idea for you."

[00:44:17] Karl: Yeah. There's a lot of bio-innovations that could use some of that resiliency funding.

[00:44:22] Erum: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:44:25] Erum: and of course, this narrative of, Am-America first and, American nationalism and, ensuring security, really comes up against the idea of what China's doing, and this is the narrative that we have. And, it is important that every country is resilient and doesn't have to, rely on other countries to develop products, so you can have a secure supply chain.

[00:44:50] Erum: but does American producer first help or hurt when the ecosystem argument is inherently a cross-border one because there's just different products made in different countries? But how do we make all the products here? It's,a conversation that was definitely alive during Bio-Innovation and something that we will continue to talk about.

[00:45:11] Erum: whether it's more about competition, or just being resilient and secure for the sake of being resilient and secure, that's something that we'll continue to, pull on that thread.

[00:45:24] Karl: Yeah. I think, as you could tell, this was a great conference. We really enjoyed it, thought the conversations were amazing.

[00:45:31] Karl: I think we should give the Bio-Innovations team a shout-out. Thank you, Paul McDonald, Leo Stamp, Kevin Ward, and Jade. It was great to meet you guys all in person. Really enjoyed the conference. Think you guys did a tremendous job. And then, of course, thank you, Veronica, for helping set up that side event in Houston.

[00:45:47] Karl: Amazing work, all of you.

[00:45:49] Erum: Yes. And we hope that if you're interested in commercializing, biotechnology and growing the bio-economy, that you attend Bio-Innovations. We went to Omaha, but Bio-Innovations has summits in Singapore, so if you're looking to do business there. Also in Europe, at The Hague in the Netherlands, which again, to get the EU perspective, that is also a great one to go to.

[00:46:13] Erum: We love the conference. We love what they're doing and building, and we hope to be a part of it for the next conference. It'd be great to go to Singapore, Carl, so maybe we put that in our hat for the next Bio-Innovations experience. But with that, I wanna thank you for tuning in to the "Grow Everything" podcast.

[00:46:29] Erum: If you have any questions, comments, please reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe to our Substack. Let's grow.

[00:46:38] Karl: Let's grow.