In 2020, the Wyss Institute established its first research and innovation alliance by joining forces with Northpond Labs, the research-and-development-focused affiliate of Northpond Ventures. Through the alliance, which was created with support from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD), Northpond Labs committed to provide $12 million to create the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute to support research with strong technology translation potential.
Through a separate arrangement with Harvard University and the Wyss Institute, Northpond is providing an additional $3 million in funding to the Institute to support discovery efforts and to create and fund the Northpond Director’s Innovation Fund. This fund bolsters the pursuit and growth of Wyss projects that have the potential to solve important unmet problems in the world, even when the path to commercialization has not yet been identified. In particular, the fund is being used to support early projects in areas including synthetic biology, biomanufacturing, synthesis of DNA and proteins, and clean water.
Additionally, members of the Northpond team routinely work with Wyss researchers, enhancing the Wyss’ culture of entrepreneurship through information sessions and one-on-one meetings. Michael P. Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Northpond Ventures and Labs, is also a Visiting Scholar at the Wyss Institute, in addition to helping oversee the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation.
We have been impressed by the collaborative and solutions-oriented approach to research at the Wyss Institute, and by the depth and breadth of innovations that it has generated.
The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation has supported the following projects toward commercialization:
2021 – Controlled Enzymatic RNA Synthesis
This technology leverages a new enzyme-based method of generating synthetic RNA oligonucleotides to manufacture RNA therapeutics, drug delivery vehicles, and genome engineering tools at scale and more sustainably. The novel synthesis approach was created in the Wyss Institute’s Synthetic Biology Platform and received two years of support as part of the Validation Project program. The startup EnPlusOne Biosciences launched from the Wyss to commercialize this technology in 2022.
2022 – SomaCode
Created in the lab of George Church, SomaCode aims to solve a major challenge in the field of cell therapy: delivering cells to their targets in the body. To do that, it identifies unique molecular “zip codes” that are displayed on the surfaces of diseased cells and engineers therapeutic cells to home to those zip codes, making cell therapies safer and more effective. This project received two years of support through the Validation Project program and is currently being de-risked.
2023 – Lab-on-a-Molecule
The Lab-on-a-Molecule team, led by Wesley Wong, is using DNA nanoswitch technology to develop an in vitro high-throughput platform that can identify compounds that bind to target proteins and change their interactions with other proteins. This approach has the potential to dramatically increase the pace of drug discovery. The technology was named a Validation Project in 2022.
2024 – AminoX
The AminoX team, formed from researchers in the labs of George Church and Jim Collins, is developing a new way to incorporate non-standard amino acids into protein drugs. Their method can be performed at room temperature without expensive equipment, allowing drug developers to rapidly create and test new protein drugs with novel properties and reducing potential off-target side effects. This technology was named a Validation Project in 2023.
This strategic alliance embodies a new mechanism for supporting innovation and providing opportunities to empower entrepreneurial teams to translate their discoveries into commercial opportunities. It also provides an exciting blueprint for future collaborations with the investment, corporate, and philanthropic communities, with strong focus on collaboratively developing technologies and business models that will lead to important solutions to pressing environmental and healthcare problems.