they pivoted to low-volume, high-price beauty & personal care ingredients, which actually generated a bunch of revenue, but not enough to cover costs. and then also bought a ton of celebrity beauty brands, which didn’t. 2022 stock plunge, 2023 bankruptcy.
there are kind of...zero large profitable firms founded after 2000 that specialize in industrial fermentation/biomanufacturing, EXCEPT a couple of biotechs that make enzyme drugs.
there’s plenty of biomanufactured products but pretty much all from very large old boring firms at sorta commodity prices?
links 1/15/25: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/srcpublic/page/01-15-2025
https://www.proteinatlas.org/ seems like a good resource. Swedish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning human cloning was first discussed by JBS Haldane in a 1969 speech!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protalix_BioTherapeutics they seem pretty successful. enzyme replacement for Gaucher disease. Israeli.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Frost interesting guy. “served as a lieutenant commander, U.S. Public Health Service at the National Cancer Institute, from 1963 to 1965.” Major pharma investor.
What happened to Amyris?
they used to be a biofuel company but couldn’t get production up and costs down:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241122084330/https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/05/10/2851/the-scientist-still-fighting-for-the-clean-fuel-the-world-forgot/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/02/10/20483/amyris-gives-up-making-biofuels-update/
https://www.fastcompany.com/1680328/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-company-that-was-going-to-have-us-all-using-biofuels
they pivoted to low-volume, high-price beauty & personal care ingredients, which actually generated a bunch of revenue, but not enough to cover costs. and then also bought a ton of celebrity beauty brands, which didn’t. 2022 stock plunge, 2023 bankruptcy.
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/beauty/amyris-filed-for-bankruptcy/
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/11/09/why-amyris-stock-was-driven-into-the-ground-on-wed/
https://www.retaildive.com/news/amyris-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-lays-off-260-workers/690636/
https://www.voguebusiness.com/beauty/why-amyris-chapter-11-bankruptcy-is-the-latest-beauty-casualty
they’re not terrible at industrial fermentation (compared to other synbio unicorns) and have some lessons learned
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7695652/
they got in trouble with the SEC for recognizing more revenue than they actually made (according to standard accounting)
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/administrative-proceedings/34-93341-s
https://www.science.org/content/article/synthetic-biology-once-hailed-moneymaker-meets-tough-times bad times for biomanufacturing/synbio overall
there are kind of...zero large profitable firms founded after 2000 that specialize in industrial fermentation/biomanufacturing, EXCEPT a couple of biotechs that make enzyme drugs.
there’s plenty of biomanufactured products but pretty much all from very large old boring firms at sorta commodity prices?