{"id":2243,"date":"2022-05-04T05:59:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:59:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.tidetronbio.com\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2023-07-22T10:45:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T02:45:49","slug":"synthetic-biology-rookie-raises-over-100-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tidetronbio.com\/en\/synthetic-biology-rookie-raises-over-100-million-in-10-months\/","title":{"rendered":"SciPhi| Exclusive Interview of Tidetron: The Synthetic Biology Startup Raised More Than $100 Million in 10 Months. Mass Production of 30 Substances was Achieved, with an Annual Output of More Than 10,000 tons"},"content":{"rendered":"
In 2021, the synthetic biology climbed to the top of its development so far. According to a report released by Synbiobeta, an American synthetic biology media, start-ups are crazy in raising money, with an overall investment of nearly $18 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Zhigan Zhang, a Generation Z, studied clinical medicine at Zhongshan School of Medicine, SYSU. Early in the university, he learned about synthetic biology and viewed it as his development goal. He participated in iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition) and won the gold medal and the Best Therapeutics Project. He also visited Yale University. Attracted by the prospect of \"synthesizing substances on demands\", he also found the problem of \"mass production\" to be solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Synthetic biology companies can be divided into two categories according to their layouts of industrial chain: whole industry chain companies and platform companies. The latter focuses on services and provides customers with technical support of synthetic biology, including representative enterprises such as Ginkgo and Zymergen. Whole industry chain companies have both synthetic biology technology and market-oriented products. Among the nearly $18 billion investment in 2021, the financing of \"application\" categories (such as food, medicine and chemicals, etc.) accounted for about 75%, and the financing of \"bioengineering platform\" accounted for about 15%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"The large-scale capital shot began in the middle of last year, while it was mostly in the warm-up stage of keen attention before that.\" Zhiqian Zhang , the founder and CEO of Tidetron, said in an interview.
Founded in 2021, Tidetron is a whole industrial chain company and has taken the lead in realizing the mass production of 30 kinds of synthetic biological products such as peptides and erythritol under the leadership of its founder. Within 10 months after its establishment, the company received four rounds of financing, which came from Unity Ventures, ZhenFund, Legend Capital, IDG Capital and other investment institutions. The total financing amount is over $100 million. The latest round of financing will be mainly used for R&D and production of new lines, including R&D and mass production of new commodity materials, pharmaceutical intermediates and mass production. \nAt present, the company is in a silent period of financing, but Mr. Zhang said that he welcomes in-depth cooperation between academic circles and industries at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>\"In terms of financing, every investment institution will have its own consideration. Our company has gained much recognition and completed four rounds of financing in a short time. On the one hand, Tidetron is the first company that practically solves the problem of changing a laboratory into a factory, and we have realized the mass production of various substances; On the other hand, it is also the reason for the overall trend in the field. \"Mr. Zhang said. It is understood that Tidetron is the one of the first bio-manufacturing platforms to realize multi-substances mass production in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time, SciPhi SynBio invited Zhiqian Zhang , the founder of Tidetron, to have interview and share the company's development history and future plans with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nUnique Strain Library, Basic Component Library and Microfluidic Platform
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In 2017, he build a laboratory with other partners who were also fond of synthetic biology, and this is the initial core team of Tidetron. The small world is pregnant with their big dream, that is, through the transformation of microorganism, scientific research achievements could be applied in industrialization from laboratory and the transformation of production could be completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>The team first set out to build a technical platform, including the strain library, the basic underlying component library and a high-throughput screening platform. In the early stage, they devoted themselves to research for many years. When the technology gradually became mature, they began to produce and test some substances. Then, they made adjustments and transformation on strains according to the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Zhiqian Zhang , a variety of mainstream gene editing tools are used to transform strains. Taking CRISPR-Cas system as an example, it has the functions of \"positioning\" and \"editing\": CRISPR is equivalent to \"GPS positioning system\", and Cas series proteins are scalpels of DNA. Through these tools, the target gene is inserted into the chassis strain, and random mutation is introduced by directional evolution, so as to make as many samples of engineering bacteria as possible. The number of cells is usually 1010-20, which greatly improves the success rate of R&D.10-20<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n