Gozen Bioworks is founded by one of Turkey's most promising young fashion designers, Ece Gozen. She's been thinking about how to merge fashion and science together, ever since she started college. And in the peak of her design career, she left to start, this company that is now Gozen Bioworks, because she has found a way to replace leather... Using a bacterial nanocellulose. And the properties of this leather are unsurpassed by anything else out there in terms of strength in terms of field, in terms of thinness, and time to produce. And we're going to cover that today. Because just four months into the indie bio program, they have traction with so many companies. Ranging from automotive to space, to well-known  luxury brands. But the real reasons why they want to Killer of the Week have something to do with how much they've driven their costs down and how much they've scaled up in the past four months. 

Learn more about Gozen: https://indiebio.co/company/gozen-bioworks/

We sit with MInus Materials, founded by Wil Srubar and Sarah Williams out of the LIving Materials Laboratory at University of Colorado Boulder. There is a type of algae that grows a shell made of calcium carbonate, which is what is used as cement for concrete, a dirty industry that emits about 8% of the world's total carbon emissions. With Minus, just replacing the calcium carbonate (limestone) inputs alone reduces the emissions by 60%. But stacked with other technologies, we can make completely carbon negative concrete at a competitive cost. 

This week we talk to MetalX Biocycles founders, Drs. Jesica Urbina and Ivan Paulino Lima, two NASA trained scientists who have been working on mining technologies that are safe enough to do in space... They bring those technologies here to earth. Rare earth, that is. They won Killer of the Week this week for a critical experiment that takes them to near completion on their proof of concept: being able to separate rare earth elements, not with toxic chemicals, but with biological reagents that are safe enough for your kitchen.

Learn more about MetalX Biocycles at https://indiebio.co/company/metalx-biocycle/ 

It's the start of SEASON 2 of the IndieBio - Killer of the Week podcast!

It's the 14th week of the IndieBio program (San Francisco, Batch 13) and Dr. Jonathan Kotula talks about how his company, Laguna Bio, is using an intracellular bacteria to supercharge the immune system to kill cancer. Laguna Bio won Killer of the Week, and Jonathan talks about recently going into a meeting with a top 3 pharma company hoping for a mouse study, and coming out with interest in doing TWO separate HUMAN studies to test their bacteria. Not only that, they've managed to save $1M in GMP manufacturing and found a way to iterate their strains in humans through an investigator-led trial. 

Learn more about Laguna Bio at https://indiebio.co/company/laguna-bio/

Veloz Bio was voted the Killer of the Week last week for making some killer moves, first, for successfully expressing an important protein in cheese called kappa casein only weeks after setting up their  "molecular farming without the farming" platform, and second, DOUBLING DOWN on that accomplishment by taking the biggest risk we've ever seen: Producing enough of this casein within 20 days so that they can feed investors at Demo Day. 

Wayfinder Bio is last week's Killer of the Week, and won because they have been cranking through pilots and closing deals with investors and customers alike. When GFP came onto the scene, it changed cell biology completely. Scientists could now see the actin cytoskeleton move in real time, and find where new cellular elements are localizing between different organelles. Now, with the ability not only to detect molecules, but also functionalize therapeutics, with their RNA aptamers, Wayfinder is enabling a new era of biology with their computational engine. 

The Killer for March 19th, 2022 was ProtonIntel, who is making the world's first continuous potassium monitor for kidney monitoring. They shrunk their electrode by over 1000x while also maintaining its sensitivity in the optimum range, making it now viable for in-human testing. They'll be flying out TODAY (date of publication) from Vancouver to Melbourne to jab themselves with their sensor and get the first measurements in humans. You're listening to the development live and hearing the inside story about the pivotal feat of engineering. 

On March 11th, 2022, Puna Bio--who is using extremophiles as biological inputs for agriculture--won Killer of the Week #16 for two things. First, one of their repeat customers called to double down on their previous order, because they had just seen with their eyes how well the product worked. Secondly, they are starting their first US trial for the soybean crop, after 20,000 acres in Argentina. 

Pyrone Systems (Batch 12) won Killer of the Week on March 4th, 2022, for engineering the first-ever yeast to use the peroxisomes to break down fatty acids to make their platform molecule: triacetic acid lactone. Learn why this is a breakthrough not only for Pyrone Systems, but for synbio as a whole.