The news: Modulus Therapeutics, a Seattle-based cellular therapy company spun out of the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI2) Incubator, has sold its cell therapy platform assets to the Boston biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks.
The companies did not disclose the terms of the acquisition. An article by Fierce Biotech noted that Ginkgo’s business development team has snapped up a string of companies and assets in recent months.
The tech: Modulus has focused on generating performance-enhancing genetic changes in natural killer (NK) cells, an up-and-coming immune cell type for use against auto-immune diseases.
The startup, which launched in 2020, created a platform to build libraries of unique cell therapy receptors from NK and T-cells. Ginkgo hopes it will be able to use these libraries to develop more effective and safer medical therapies.
“We’re really proud of the novel functionality we’ve been able to build into cell therapy candidates using custom immune receptors. With hundreds of new receptor designs now in the Ginkgo arsenal, we can’t wait to see how Ginkgo’s scale can help accelerate the adoption of these technologies!” said Modulus co-founder and CEO Max Darnell in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday.
GeekWire reached out to Modulus for additional comment and we’ll update when we hear back.
Background: Darnell co-founded the company with bioinformatician and Chief Data Scientist Bryce Daines. The pair met as entrepreneurs-in-residence at AI2.
In 2021, Madrona Venture Group led two seed investment rounds for Modulus that totaled $3.78 million and included participation from KdT Ventures, AI2, AI2 Incubator, and Pack Ventures, according to PitchBook.
Looking ahead: The deal with Ginkgo is an acquisition of assets alone and does not include Modulus employees. When reached by email on Tuesday, Darnell did not comment on next steps for the startup, but said the deal was “a strong validation of the tech by Ginkgo.”
A spokesperson for Ginkgo confirmed that Modulus will continue operating after the transaction, and will pursue work on their drug pipeline.
Related news: Modulus, a cell therapy biotech incubated at the Allen Institute for AI, raises $3.5M
Editor’s note: Story updated to address the future of Modulus.
