industrial-biotechnology
(5)
Manus
Manus (Manus Bio) is an MIT-born industrial biotechnology company that engineers microbial cell factories and precision fermentation to produce natural ingredients - sweeteners, flavors, fragrances and pharmaceutical building blocks - that are normally extracted from plants or made from petrochemicals. Branded as 'The BioAlternatives Company,' Manus runs an R&D hub in Boston and a commercial-scale biomanufacturing plant in Augusta, Georgia, where it makes products such as monk fruit sweetener and stevia Reb M for partners including Givaudan and Tate & Lyle.
Calysta
Calysta is a San Mateo, California biotechnology company that uses a patented gas-fermentation platform to turn methane into FeedKind, a single-cell protein for aquaculture, livestock and pet feed - and increasingly human food. Its bacteria eat natural gas instead of arable land, plants or animals, producing protein with a low environmental footprint. Backed by Cargill, BP and Temasek and partnered with Adisseo through the Calysseo joint venture, Calysta opened the world's first industrial-scale single-cell protein plant in Chongqing, China in 2022.
Biotechnology Innovation Organization
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) is the world's largest trade association for the biotech industry, representing more than 1,000 companies, research institutions and state and regional bio centers across the United States and 30-plus countries. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., BIO lobbies on drug pricing, intellectual property, regulation and biosecurity, and runs the BIO International Convention - the industry's flagship annual dealmaking and networking event. Led since 2024 by President and CEO John F. Crowley, a rare-disease entrepreneur whose own children have Pompe disease, BIO's stated mission is to advance a 'bio revolution' that cures patients, protects the climate and nourishes humanity.
Terragia Biofuel
Terragia Biofuel is a New Hampshire climate-tech startup turning non-food plant waste into cost-competitive, low-carbon ethanol using engineered thermophilic bacteria. Its consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) approach skips the expensive enzymes and thermochemical pretreatment that have historically sunk cellulosic biofuel economics, promising an 8x shorter payback period at 10x smaller scale. Spun out of Professor Lee Lynd's decades of research at Dartmouth, Terragia aims to make biofuels for hard-to-electrify transport - aviation, shipping, and long-haul trucking - that can actually compete with fossil fuels.
Douglas Friedman
Douglas Friedman is CEO of BioMADE, the U.S. Department of Defense-funded Manufacturing Innovation Institute dedicated to growing the domestic industrial biomanufacturing ecosystem. With a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern and a career spanning the National Academies, the White House OSTP, and the founding of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, Friedman is one of the foremost architects of America's bioeconomy strategy — arguing that biology, not silicon, may define the next great manufacturing revolution.