Synlogic Reflects on 2022 Grand Jamboree and How Synthetic Biology Can Transform Medicine

By Synlogic’s Sean Cotton, Lead Strain Engineer, and Analise Reeves, Head of Synthetic Biology Discovery

Participating in the iGEM 2022 Grand Jamboree in Paris was an honor!

We returned to our home base in Cambridge, MA, energized and focused on continuing our work bringing a new class of biotherapeutics – through synthetic biology – to patients who have unmet medical needs.

The Grand Jamboree was a great space for us to learn more about synthetic biology's diverse applications and share insights from Synlogic.

Synlogic is a clinical-stage biotechnology company based in Cambridge, MA. It was founded in 2014 by renowned MIT professors James J. Collins and Tim Lu. At Synlogic, we use synthetic biology to make Synthetic Biotics that target metabolic and immunological diseases.

Essentially, we program microbes to accomplish therapeutic tasks in the human gut. In the past eight years, we've opened six Investigational New Drug applications with the Food and Drug Administration, dosed more than 350 individuals, and established an entire clinical-stage pipeline of candidate biotherapeutics!

We were invited to the Grand Jamboree by the iGEM Design League, who hosted our presentations. We discussed how synthetic biology has made our achievements possible. Sean's presentation, titled "Transforming Medicine Through Synthetic Biology: A Look at the Future of Synthetic Biology," discussed Synlogic's approach to producing our drugs and how our team applies genetic engineering to probiotics that are already well-understood (or well-characterized) by scientists.

Analise's talk, "Engineering Microbes into Synthetic Biotics," dug into the complex processes through which these drugs act and explained some of the benefits of our research partnerships with Roche and Ginkgo Bioworks.

One benefit to our method is that it can be used to prevent systematic absorption, limiting the drug's presence in the body to the gastrointestinal tract. On the other hand, Analise's talk, "Engineering Microbes into Synthetic Biotics," dug into the complex processes through which these drugs act and explained some of the benefits of our research partnerships with Roche and Ginkgo Bioworks.

The partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks has developed two drug candidates: one for the potential treatment of homocystinuria (HCU), a debilitating metabolic disease, and one for gout, a complex form of inflammatory arthritis. Our research collaboration with Roche aims to create a treatment for inflammatory bowel disease.

In the presentations, we showed examples from our advanced pipeline of Synthetic Biotics. This pipeline includes drug candidates aimed at diseases such as phenylketonuria (PKU), our lead program, which recently saw positive results in a Phase 2 study and will move ahead to a pivotal Phase 3 trial in 2023.PKU is an inherited metabolic disease that can result in neurotoxic levels of the amino acid phenylalanine (Phe), leading to neurocognitive disabilities. Other examples of our robust pipeline include HCU, a rare disease characterized by extreme levels of homocysteine and presents risks of acute stroke, skeletal abnormalities, developmental disabilities, and enteric hyperoxaluria, a progressive disease caused by impaired absorption of oxalate, a recognized cause of recurrent kidney stones.

The seriousness of such disorders underscores one of the many extraordinary ways in which the promise of synthetic biology—and an event like the Jamboree—is so hopeful and so inspiring. As we were vividly reminded in Paris, the range of challenges to which synthetic biology may be usefully applied is truly astonishing—and rapidly expanding.

At Synlogic, the scope of our goals and the pace of our success reflects the aspiration that drives our work: to create a new class of biotherapeutics for patients who need new options.

We sincerely thank iGEM and the many brilliant students and colleagues who participated in this year's Grand Jamboree. We can't wait to see you again next year!