Synlogic, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYBX), a clinical-stage company applying synthetic biology to beneficial microbes to develop novel, living medicines and Ginkgo Bioworks, the organism company, today announced a platform collaboration to accelerate expansion and development of Synlogic’s pipeline of Synthetic Bioticmedicines using Ginkgo’s cell programming platform.
The agreement provides an $80.0 million equity investment at a premium in Synlogic by Ginkgo and entry into a long-term strategic platform collaboration. Synlogic will use Ginkgo’s cell programming platform for building and testing thousands of microbial strains to accelerate progression of early preclinical leads to drug candidates optimized for further clinical development.
“This collaboration significantly enhances Synlogic’s Synthetic Biotic strain optimization capabilities and builds on the successful pilot program we began with Ginkgo in late 2017. It enables us to advance high-quality candidate strains into development more efficiently and provides technology and resources that will fuel pipeline expansion as we continue to advance our existing clinical programs,”
said Aoife Brennan, M.B., Ch.B., Synlogic’s president and chief executive officer.
“Ginkgo has built a world-class infrastructure for programming and optimizing microbial strains at a large scale which will be instrumental in the development of our portfolio of Synthetic Biotic medicines. We are excited to establish this agreement and to work together to advance meaningful treatments for patients.”
“The ability to program living cells to sense and respond to treat complex diseases has great potential. Synlogic’s platform for designing and developing living medicines that can treat a wide range of dynamic diseases has the potential to be transformative to the next generation of pharmaceuticals,”
said Jason Kelly, Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Ginkgo Bioworks.
“Based on the success of our pilot work with the Synlogic team, we’re doubling down on our collaboration to grow this powerful engine for the future of medicine together.”
Ginkgo has purchased 6,340,771 shares of Synlogic common stock as well as pre-funded warrants to purchase up to 2,548,117 shares of Synlogic common stock, both at a price of $9.00 per share. Gross proceeds to Synlogic are approximately $80 million. The transactions were executed and closed on June 11, 2019. At the closing, under the foundry services agreement, Synlogic paid $30.0 million to Ginkgo for synthetic biology services to be provided over an initial period of five years which can be extended. Synlogic has exclusive rights to any Synthetic Biotic medicines that it develops as part of the collaboration and to intellectual property covering such products.