Circe Bioscience licenses technology to decarbonize industry with microbes developed at Wyss Institute at Harvard University
May 15 2024 - 7:00AM
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
University announced today that Circe, a startup developed at the
Institute and spun out of Harvard, has signed a worldwide,
exclusive licensing agreement coordinated by Harvard’s Office of
Technology Development (OTD) to commercialize a novel bioproduction
technology that could significantly reduce the carbon emissions of
industries from food to aviation fuel.
Circe has raised more than $8 million to date from investors
including Regen Ventures, Undeterred Capital, Ponderosa Ventures,
Bee Partners, and Elementum Ventures.
“One of the great challenges humanity faces is how to maintain
global growth and production and decarbonize everything at the same
time. Circe is addressing this critical problem by using gas
fermentation to manufacture the products and molecules we need in a
carbon-negative way,” said Shannon Nangle, Ph.D., who co-founded
Circe along with fellow Wyss member Marika Ziesack, Ph.D.
Developed in the lab of Wyss Core Faculty member Pamela Silver,
Ph.D., Circe’s technology grows microbes on gasses like carbon
dioxide --- in the same way plants grow --- and harvests the
molecules they build. Nangle and Ziesack used synthetic biology to
tweak the metabolisms of certain microbes that naturally “eat”
greenhouse gasses so that they use those gases to manufacture
molecules that are valuable to many industries. Their platform has
produced molecules identical to those that make up sugars, fats,
biodegradable plastics, and biofuels, all using only CO2, water,
and electricity as inputs.
“In order to ensure that the Earth is habitable for future
generations of humans, we urgently need to decarbonize industries
and start reversing the damage we’ve caused to the planet. Microbes
are wonderful living machines that we can leverage to produce the
things we need for everyone to live a happy, comfortable life while
reducing pollution, land use, and fossil fuel consumption,” said
Silver, who is also the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professor of
Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School
(HMS).
Circe’s first products in development are triglycerides: the
molecules that make up the fats, butters, and oils that we eat and
use every day. The team has used their triglycerides to make the
world’s first gas fermentation-derived chocolate, which - given the
worldwide shortage of cocoa in the 2023-2024 growing season - could
provide a solution to global food supply chain interruptions. In
addition, this proof-of-concept enables the production of food
products in any region, reducing the industry’s carbon
footprint.
The Circe team is also exploring other types of fats, including
milkfat that can add creaminess to both dairy and non-dairy milk
products, and palm oil that can be used across the food and
cosmetics industries, as well as for sustainable fuels.
Circe’s fermentation platform was created and significantly
de-risked at the Wyss Institute through the Institute’s validation
pipeline, which provides aspiring entrepreneurs with the resources
and support they need to transition their teams and technologies
from the lab to the real world. Based on its potential for
significant positive impact, it was named an Institute Project in
2021 and provided additional funding from the Wyss to expedite its
commercialization.
Over the course of Circe’s development, the team won several
accolades in recognition of its innovative concept. While at the
Wyss, they were awarded $3.2 million from the US Department of
Energy’s ARPA-E ECOSynBio program, and Nangle and Ziesack were
named 2021 Activate Fellows. After the company spun out of Harvard,
Nangle was named an “Innovator Under 35” by MIT Tech Review.
“For centuries, humans’ relationship with Nature has been
dominated by extraction, destruction, and consumption. A paradigm
shift to one of conservation, regeneration, and co-production using
Nature's building materials rather than harsh chemicals is starting
to happen, but at much too slow a pace. The Circe team’s technology
has the potential to speed up the transition to a future in which
we work with Nature to produce what we need, rather than exploiting
it,” said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., the Wyss Institute’s Founding
Director. Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of
Vascular Biology at HMS and Boston Children’s Hospital, and
the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at
Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences (SEAS).
Lindsay Brownell
Wyss Institute at Harvard University
lindsay.brownell@wyss.harvard.edu