Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on solutions for the biotech sector. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, you will discover 5 promising bioprospecting startups.
Heat Map: 5 Top Bioprospecting Startups
Using our StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, covering 1.379.000+ startups & scaleups, we looked at innovation in the field of biotechnology. For this research, we identified 55 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies are chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and relevance of technology, among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & scaleups developing innovative bioprospecting solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 55 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
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Varigen Biosciences – Natural Product Pathways
Since its inception, the biotech industry has turned to bioprospecting, or the search for novel molecules in natural resources, to drive innovation. With the growth of sequencing and metagenomics technologies, startups now explore the wealth of microbial diversity on the planet for new products. This requires new solutions to discover and culture microbes that were previously difficult to cultivate.
Varigen Biosciences is a US-based startup that uses metagenomics to discover natural product pathways in soil microbes. The startup develops BigDNA, soil metagenomic libraries, that contain full pathways to discover, sequence, and amplify novel genes. BigDNA enables the startup to harness microbe diversity to develop new enzymes, drugs, and cultures.
YLive – Veterinary Probiotics
Bioprospecting enables the discovery of natural product solutions for a range of applications in healthcare, pharma, and agritech. For agritech, these solutions are often sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives to synthetic chemicals. Another application of bioprospecting is the discovery and development of probiotics for animal health. Bioprospecting also allows for the customization of probiotics to suit the specific needs of different breeds.
Brazilian startup YLive develops advanced bioprospecting methods to discover veterinary probiotics. The startup performs microbiome analysis and also uses genetic tools to identify the microbes best suited for use as probiotics from a pool of thousands of microbes. YLive offers tailor-made probiotics for dairy cattle, poultry, and companion animals.
Pluton Biosciences – Microbe Discovery
In general, only a tiny fraction of the microbial species have been identified to date. The remaining undetected species potentially hold novel and sustainable solutions for the biotech industry, as well as for numerous other industries, including biopesticides and therapeutic moieties. Startups and scaleups are working on techniques that speed up the discovery and identification of microbes for commercial use.
Pluton Biosciences is a US-based biotech startup that mines microbes from the soil. Micromining, the startup’s discovery platform, enables a faster and relatively inexpensive exploration of commercially beneficial bacteria, fungi, and viruses. It discovers novel microbes for applications in biopesticides, crop protection, and bioremediation, as well as in healthcare.
Microbiotica – Personalized Medicine
In addition to soil, the human body is an exciting frontier for the discovery of novel microorganisms. As research in microbiomes elucidates the role gut microbes play in human health, startups are now working to characterize the diversity in human guts. Combined with bioinformatics, this enables the development of personalized therapies using live bacteria.
British startup Microbiotica develops microbiome-based solutions for personalized medicine. The startup combines Personalized Bacterial Bank, a technology that enables the isolation of all gut bacteria from an individual, with microbiome bioinformatics and machine learning (ML). This enables the identification of personalized microbiome signatures for drug response and biomarkers, as well as target discovery for live bacterial therapeutics (LBT).
Hexagon Bio – Data-Driven Biotech
The growth of omics technologies, such as genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, has led to a massive increase in the amount of biological data. Startups use tools from bioinformatics, computational biology, and ML to then reveal useful insights from these datasets. This bioprospecting approach is combinatorial, high-throughput, and also enables the rapid development of biotech products.
Hexagon Bio is a US-based startup that uses data-driven biotech to develop targeted small molecule therapeutics. The startup’s proprietary technologies enable the development of medicines against novel targets. The TICker algorithm identifies human targets of natural products found in fungi. The startup then uses its HEx platform to produce new chemical entities based on novel chemical scaffolds.
What About The Other 50 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence and enable you to achieve your goals faster. The 5 bioprospecting startups showcased above are promising examples out of 55 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
