Abstract
A US government agency has approved the industrial biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks for a loan of up to $1.1 billion to optimize production of COVID-19 vaccines and tests. Ginkgo will use the money to expand infrastructure, including lab-scale bioreactors and automation equipment, aimed at responding to the pandemic. In March, Ginkgo opened its Boston-area discovery and production services to firms working on COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. In April, it linked up with Moderna to optimize production of raw materials for that company’s messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine candidate . While Ginkgo is best known for optimizing engineered microbes, it has spent 2 years building mammalian cell capabilities, says Patrick Boyle, Ginkgo’s head of codebase. For example, it has a large fleet of devices to accelerate screening for mammalian protein expression. With the loan from the International Development Finance Corp., Ginkgo can expand its ability to optimize cell strains and boost
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