In the ever-evolving landscape of biotechnology, groundbreaking innovations are continually reshaping the industry. One such innovation that has caught our attention comes from Tierra Biosciences, a company with the potential to revolutionize protein synthesis and transform how we approach biologics and synthetic biology.
Today, we are excited to share why Creative Ventures has decided to invest in Tierra Biosciences and how their cutting-edge technology addresses critical challenges in the field.
Meet Tierra Biosciences
Tierra Biosciences is on a mission to democratize access to proteins by providing on-demand protein production solutions to diverse clients, including pharmaceutical companies, CROs, biotech firms, and synthetic biology companies. Tierra is truly distinguished by its ability to synthesize proteins efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively. They address a significant bottleneck in the industry with their core technology in automated cell-free protein synthesis.
The Problem: A protein synthesis bottleneck
Traditional methods of protein synthesis are labor-intensive and time-consuming, often involving weeks of trial-and-error experimentation. The process involves identifying and optimizing DNA sequences that encode the protein of interest, adding purification tags, cloning the DNA sequences into an expression system, protein expression, protein purification, and storage. Every single step is prone to failure and a potential endless optimization that may not materialize. After months of trial and error, obtaining certain proteins for further functional tests may still not be attainable.
The problem is particularly acute because protein expression yield and feasibility may depend highly on the expression hosts. Only a few widely used hosts, such as E. coli and Pichia, are generally used as a protein production system. Other protein targets, such as artificially designed proteins or modifications, may also be difficult or infeasible to make in standard hosts.
Tierra’s Solution: Revolutionizing protein synthesis
Tierra Biosciences has developed a revolutionary approach to protein synthesis, offering a faster, more efficient, and cost-effective solution. Their cell-free core technology takes protein sequences of interest from customers and delivers synthesized proteins ready for relevant downstream testing. This process, which bypasses in-cell expression, is projected to offer 100x higher throughput, 10x faster turnaround, and 10x cost savings at scale.
Global and technology trends
Tierra Biosciences aligns with significant trends within our investment scope. With rising healthcare costs due to an aging population, Tierra’s technology can help streamline drug discovery, potentially reducing the high costs associated with the development of biologics. The most commonly known types of drugs are derived from chemical-based Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) like acetaminophen, which can be found in pain relievers like Tylenol. The chemical APIs are, for the most part, commodities. Hence, many generic drug alternatives are available in the market. In contrast, a different type of treatment is derived from biologic APIs, such as insulin or antibodies, which are more complicated to manufacture and generally less accessible than chemical APIs.
Notably, while chemical APIs make up the majority of drug prescriptions in the US, biologic APIs comprise a disproportionately greater amount of US drug sales.
Tierra’s platform has the potential to accelerate biologics API development and ultimately plays a key role in simplifying and reducing biologics API manufacturing costs.
Final thoughts
Before the PCR machine was invented, DNA was amplified manually by moving the samples to and from water baths set at different temperatures. Tierra Biosciences’ groundbreaking approach to protein synthesis has the potential to reshape the industry in a similar way by revamping how proteins should be synthesized.
Creative Ventures is confident in Tierra’s ability to succeed, and we are excited to be part of their journey as they work towards revolutionizing protein synthesis and unlocking new possibilities in biopharmaceuticals and synthetic biology.
