biotechnology vc funding, vaccines, technology. what is biotechnology? biotech: refers to the use of...
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Biotechnology
VC Funding, Vaccines, Technology
What is Biotechnology?
Biotech: refers to the use of living organisms or their products to modify human health and the human environment.
Recombinant DNA Technology has made this all possible
Applications
Healthcare Gene therapy, pharma, genetic testing, Sequencing
of Human Genome
Green Biotech Genetic engineering to produce environmentally
detrimental products through a renewable feedstock
Bioinformatics Using computational models to enhance
understanding of DNA in all organisms
Viruses
Viruses mutate very fast, our immune system cannot keep up to detect, develop immune response and defend our healthy cells
H1N1, has an enzyme called Reverse Transcriptase that makes errors naturally, mutates quickly as it spreads
Vaccines
Polio and small pox were eliminated using vaccines
Target of this technology is to eradicate: Influenza virus causes 35,000 USA deaths
annuallyHIV Hepatitis B VirusHuman T Cell Lymphocyte Virus
Example of Startup
MolecularBreeding™ Technology DNA Shuffling leads to high throughput screening
to rapidly identify antigens with the potential to provide protection against various diseases
Big benefit is technology is universal to all viruses, bigger piece of market pie
Market Annual Vaccine Market $25.8B annualy Growing at a rate of 31.8% annually
Benefits of this technology
Most viruses are live attenuated viruses, meaning you are get a piece of a live virus, develop immunity and thus a defense against the virus for life; or a killed pathogen
However, these methods have not worked for vaccine development with HIV, Hep B, H1N1, etc
Our screening: robust, fast, rapid screening of potential vaccines; we use Viruses abilities of “stealth mode” to deliver the vaccine
Potential of Biotech
DNA Vaccine technology can keep up with viral mutations, and prevent a pandemic
Green TechnologyReduce dependency on foreign petroleum
Field is really only 20 years old, nascent technologies need to be refined but potential is great