Ginkgo and Boehringer Join Forces in a $406 Million Partnership to Uncover New Therapeutic Molecules

Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks is entering a new partnership with German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim to discover therapeutic molecules that could treat diseases that are considered “out of reach” by conventional drug discovery. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Ginkgo will receive upfront research fees and could potentially earn up to $406 million in milestone payments as well as royalties on sales. 

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Discovering New Molecules for Undruggable Targets

More than half of all the targets linked to human disease are considered “undruggable” due to the limitations of traditional approaches. New techniques are required to develop treatments that could tackle these undruggable targets. 

To that end, Ginkgo and Boehringer will leverage Ginkgo’s metagenomic sequence database to discover bioactive molecules that could serve as the starting points for novel treatments. 

Ginkgo possesses one of the biggest metagenomics databases in the world, especially after its $300 million acquisition of Zymergen last year. According to the company, its databases contain over three terabases of sequence data and over two billion protein sequences derived from microbes. 

“Ginkgo is well-positioned to help partners like Boehringer Ingelheim complement their drug discovery efforts particularly when it comes to natural product discovery,” said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder at Ginkgo Bioworks.

“We are thrilled to work with Boehringer Ingelheim leveraging our Foundry and Codebase to unlock new possibilities in biopharma innovation,” he said. 

Ginkgo Provides Services for Many Markets

Ginkgo counts Roche and Novo Nordisk among its collaborators, and has utilized its metagenomics database on Merck’s behalf to dig up enzymes used in pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing. 

Last month, Ginkgo sold off its laboratory (formerly belonging to Zymergen) in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Belgium-based Solvay as part of a multi-year partnership to develop sustainable materials with synthetic biology. Later that month, Ginkgo announced a collaboration with Syngenta Seeds to screen a targeted genetic library to discover new seed traits that could help farmers grow better crops. 

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Joy Lin

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