In bid to advance manufacturing capabilities, Inscripta buys out two biotechs

A life sciences company just bought out two synthetic biology companies to add to its manufacturing arsenal.

Genome engineer and synbio outfit Inscripta put out word Wednesday that it acquired Infinome Biosciences and Sestina Bio to advance Inscripta’s strategy of developing and commercializing bio-manufactured products in a variety of markets.

Richard Fox

Before the acquisition, Infinome was affiliated with Inscripta — the former developed its proprietary strain engineering platform using Inscripta’s tech. Infinome co-founder and CEO Richard Fox said in a press release that combining the two companies brings a “shared vision” together of scalable and sustainable solutions for biomanufacturing.

As for Sestina, the synbio player’s emphasis has been on developing a data-based approach from the outset to build and identify strains that can make it out of the lab and be used in commercial scale-up operations. According to Sestina’s VP of R&D, Andrew Horwitz, combining Sestina’s approach and Inscripta’s capabilities in genome editing can reduce the time and cost of bringing products to market, according to a company statement.

Andrew Horwitz

While Inscripta did not officially say how much it paid for the two biotechs, Inscripta did raise $27.7 million on Wednesday, according to an SEC filing.

Inscripta did not respond to queries from Endpoints News. 

This newest acquisition reflects the biotech’s broader push into its vision of scaling and democratizing access to gene editing. After $125 million in Series D funding in 2019 as it launched its gene editing platform, the Boulder biotech received another $150 million from investors in a 2021 Series E for its engineering platform.

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