US biotech firms Genomatica and Ginkgo Bioworks have formed an alliance to accelerate the adoption of biological process technology within the mainstream chemical industry. The partners said they want to deliver biology-based solutions more rapidly for the world’s highest-volume intermediate and specialty chemicals. Mainstream chemical producers can now license the technology, which includes engineered microorganisms, complete process designs and technology transfer support.

Bio-based production of intermediate chemicals is said to deliver better overall economics and greater sustainability and performance by harnessing the power of biotechnology and microorganism engineering to grow products. According to the companies, only a few dozen chemicals are used in the main downstream industries, where markets are worth many billions of dollars each.

Biology’s potential to impact the chemical industry is substantial and rapidly evolving, said Carlos Cabrera, Genomatica’s executive chairman, adding that the alliance now makes it practical and feasible for industry participants to license and deploy cost-effective and innovative biotechnology.  “Ginkgo’s foundries bring tremendous capability to accelerate organism engineering and complement our strengths in whole-process design, computation and manufacturing scale-up,” commented Genomatica’s CEO, Christophe Schilling.

Boston-based Ginkgo has also just launched Bioworks2, its next-generation automated facility for testing prototypes and scaling up processes. The company said Bioworks2 is twice the size and offers at least six times an expected increase in capacity than Bioworks1, its original foundry, and represents a step-change in what is possible for organism design.