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Synthetic Biology And The Computerization Of Drug Development

 
• By Melanie Senior

Synthetic biology offers opportunity across many industries, but the ultimate prize may be health care. The millions of dollars investors have poured into companies developing CAR-T cell therapies and gene editing technologies points to growing confidence in the power of gene manipulation to generate novel, approvable therapeutics, even if for now these are just the early steps toward creating fully synthetic organisms.

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Over the last three decades, digital technologies have transformed lifestyles, livelihoods and businesses, creating new wealth, industrial sectors and opportunities. The impact of synthetic biology – which combines biology with engineering to design and create new biological systems – could be 10 times that of the technology revolution, and happen in half the time. So presages Randal J. Kirk, billionaire chairman and CEO of Intrexon Corp., one of a handful of listed companies seeking to drive – and ride – this next revolution. “This [synthetic biology] is the most important, attractive and productive industrial vector in the history of man.”

Engineering DNA, the codebook for life, isn’t new. Recombinant DNA and the creation of manufactured biologicals were the bedrock of...

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