Deep Dive #9: Cell Free Systems
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Alix Ventures: Supporting Early Stage Life Science Startups Engineering Biology to Drive Radical Advances in Human Health
Overview
The potential of synthetic biology to reshape the biopharma industry arose as a result of advances in DNA sequencing technology, allowing researchers to introduce bespoke genetic constructs in cells of interest. Engineering these systems, however, are constrained by the complexity and lack of standardized, repeatable conditions across cells, and the difficulty of transporting and integrating foreign DNA across cell membranes. A promising interdisciplinary approach is the use of cell-free systems: in-vitro production of recombinant proteins in cell lysates using, among others, translational machinery extracted from cells. Though cell-free biology was conceived of decades ago, low yields, high production, and challenges associated with improper folding of recombinant proteins impeded commercialization progress in the early 2000s, with much progress being made by the Swartz Lab at Stanford University.