Humble Bee Bio to use Ginkgo Bioworks Cell Development Kit to Advance Biomaterials Product
Humble Bee will leverage Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to build its custom microbe for the development of bioplastic material.
WELLINGTON, NZ and BOSTON, MA (December 20, 2021)
Humble Bee Bio, a developer of a novel bioplastic designed to replace petrochemical plastics in textiles, announced it will use the Cell Development Kit (CDK) product offered by Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, to advance its product development timeline. Through the CDK, Humble Bee Bio will have streamlined access to Ginkgo’s cell programming platform, tools, and expertise as it develops a microbial strain for the optimized production of its bioplastic. Humble Bee Bio is one of three partners to join Ginkgo Bioworks’ first CDK cohort focused on protein expression.
Unlike conventional petrochemical plastics, the material Humble Bee Bio is developing will be sustainable and fully biodegradable. The material uses a protein originally found in the nests of a solitary bee; Humble Bee Bio will use microbial fermentation to commercially scale its production. Humble Bee Bio’s materials can be tailor-made with high-performance properties for multiple market applications.
Ginkgo Bioworks’ CDK product provides Humble Bee Bio with the key components needed to build its custom organism, including pre-engineered cells, specialised equipment, automation, expertise, and the infrastructure to design, build, and test it. Launched in November 2021, CDKs are designed for teams like Humble Bee Bio to program cells that can tackle the biggest challenges facing society and the planet.
“Plastic pollution presents existential threats to our society and ecosystems. Our time to solve this problem is limited. We need to get products into market as soon as possible and Ginkgo’s CDK helps Humble Bee Bio de-risk the development process and enables data-driven decisions at each step,” said Ryan Graves, CTO and interim CEO of Humble Bee Bio. “Ginkgo’s expertise and high throughput platform can help us iterate on a solution to increase the probability of success and accelerate our time to market.”
“Programming biology to replace petroleum-based materials is the exact sort of application we had in mind when designing our CDKs. We’re proud that our CDK product is enabling partners like Humble Bee Bio to move swiftly to make world-changing products a reality,” said Patrick Boyle, Head of Codebase at Ginkgo Bioworks.
To learn more or inquire about Humble Bee Bio’s work, please visit https://www.humblebee.co.nz/.
About Humble Bee Bio
Humble Bee Bio is a deep tech startup combining the power of synthetic biology and a recipe from a solitary bee to help solve one of our toughest global challenges, plastic pollution.
For more information, visit https://www.humblebee.co.nz/.
HUMBLE BEE BIO MEDIA CONTACT: Gabriela Perez, gabriela@humblebee.co.nz
