INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
hubs is getting a new accelerator called Petri to launch companies focused on the commercialization of new technologies.Backed by the
Boston-based venture capital firm Pillar, Petri has a three-year $15 million commitment to back companies developing new biotech
new biotech research coming from Boston-based universities, like Boston University, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.Asimov,io, a company that has set an ultimate goal of designing new genomes for industrial applications, was co-founded by
graduates from Boston University and MIT, and is a part of the Pillar portfolio
PathAi, a company working on enabling technologies for computational biology, also counts an MIT grad as a co-founder
genetic applications for healthcare and manufacturing.As an instructor at MIT, Kulesa spent seven years at MIT watching, in his words, how
engineering has transformed biology
a serial entrepreneur who founded Midori Health, an animal nutrition startup; Kaleido Biosciences, a microbiome control focused company;
Celexion, a protein engineering and synthetic biology company; and Codon Devices, a synthetic biology toolkit company which was sold to
Ginkgo Bioworks .Over time, Kulesa and Baynes expect to have 10 to 20 companies in each cohort as the program expands
In addition to checks of at least $250,000 the Petri accelerator has lab and office space available for each company.The companies also
could benefit from potential partnerships with companies like Ginkgo Bioworks, which happens to share office space in the same building,
Twist Bioscience; Stan Lapidus, who was at Exact Sciences and Cytyc; Daphne Koller, the co-founder and chief executive of Insitro; Alec
engineered organisms are finding their way into everything from food to fuel to chemistry
Companies like Impossible Foods, which uses genetically modified soy product, has raised hundreds of millions for its protein replacement,
while Solugen, a manufacturer of chemicals using genetically modified organisms, has raised tens of millions to commercialize its technology
Goldstein, in a statement
