Ginkgo Bioworks Acquires Bitome, an Integrated Metabolite Monitoring Platform

Through real-time metabolite monitoring, Bitome's technology is expected to support accelerated product development timelines across Ginkgo's portfolio of cell programs

BOSTON, June 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ginkgo Bioworks (NYSE: DNA), the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, today announced that it has acquired certain assets from Bitome, a company pioneering real-time metabolite monitoring for faster biological product development. Bitome has developed technology leveraging machine learning to provide continuous monitoring of cell culture media, illuminating the performance of cells in real-time and enabling faster rates of bioprocess optimization.

In the design-build-test-learn process that is central to synthetic biology, testing the performance of cells is an expensive and time-consuming bottleneck. Bitome's continuous metabolite monitoring technology can help address this bottleneck, providing essential data on cell performance and potentially accelerating the path to production-ready organisms. Real-time data on the metabolic state of the cells in a bioreactor helps scientists better anticipate which cell lines and process conditions to select for further optimization, which in turn can reduce the number and duration of bioreactor runs that are necessary for a given project.

"Ginkgo is constantly looking for opportunities to strengthen its cell engineering platform, and a central component of cell engineering is testing and optimizing strains at scale," said Barry Canton, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Ginkgo Bioworks. "Having evaluated Bitome's technology over the past few years, we believe their technology will allow us to accelerate the design and optimization of strains across a range of customers and industries."

"Bitome was founded to unleash faster biotech innovation, and one of the core obstacles this industry faces is incomplete strain performance data," said Herbert Ryan, co-founder and CEO at Bitome. "Our team is thrilled to be joining the Ginkgo platform where we can deploy our technology much more broadly to create the next generation of synthetic biology."

Ginkgo is building a platform to enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company's platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo has also actively supported a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including K-12 pooled testing, vaccine manufacturing optimization and therapeutics discovery. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

Bitome, Inc. is a Boston-based company that is digitizing bioprocessing. Bitome's AI engine leverages metabolomics to rapidly accelerate process optimization -- helping biotech companies get their product to market faster.

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding the potential success of the acquisition and Ginkgo's cell programming platform. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words "believe," "can," "project," "potential," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "strategy," "future," "opportunity," "plan," "may," "should," "will," "would," "will be," "will continue," "will likely result," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: (i) the effect of Ginkgo's business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp. ("Soaring Eagle") on Ginkgo's business relationships, performance, and business generally, (ii) risks that the business combination disrupts current plans of Ginkgo and potential difficulties in Ginkgo's employee retention, (iii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Ginkgo related to its business combination with Soaring Eagle, (iv) volatility in the price of Ginkgo's securities now that it is a public company due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive and highly regulated industries in which Ginkgo operates and plans to operate, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting Ginkgo's business and changes in the combined capital structure, (v) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the business combination, and identify and realize additional opportunities, (vi) the risk of downturns in demand for products using synthetic biology, (vii) the unpredictability of the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the demand for COVID-19 testing and the commercial viability of our COVID-19 testing business, and (viii) changes to the biosecurity industry, including due to advancements in technology, emerging competition and evolution in industry demands, standards and regulations. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the "Risk Factors" section of Ginkgo's quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on May 16, 2022 and other documents filed by Ginkgo from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and Ginkgo assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Ginkgo does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

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SOURCE Ginkgo Bioworks