VentureBeat

Biotechnology owes its birth as an industry to the discovery of recombinant DNA, which allowed researchers to make particular proteins by tinkering with cellular genomes. Inserting the gene for human insulin into a bacterial cell, for instance, turns it into an insulin factory. The same goes for any number of other biotech drugs, which by and large are produced in living but genetically altered cells.

Although cellular production first made it possible to make industrial levels of some proteins, the process isn’t without flaws. Some proteins can’t be produced at all in certain cells, while others end up missing particular sugars or other molecules that hang on protein “branches” and affect their function. For another take on some of these problems, see our July story on Coda Genomics, one biotech with a new take on resolving some of these issues.

A different approach involves the audacious step of doing away with the cell altogether. Fundamental Applied Biology is one company taking this tack by trying to replicate a cell’s protein-production system in a vat, a technique that — if it works — could make it possible to produce a novel variety of therapeutic and industrial proteins safely and with much greater efficiency.

Although it sounds conceptually straightforward, this is a vastly complicated task, which is one reason no one yet produces biotech therapeutics this way. FAB’s own description of its technology isn’t terribly illuminating, and neither is this 2005 Stanford publication that purports to explain the work of Stanford professor Jim Swartz, who developed the techniques now in use at FAB. I’m scheduled to speak with the company later this afternoon, though, and I’ll update with what I learn.

At this point, my guess is that such “cell-free” protein production is a long way from practical use in the biotech industry, although it may prove itself in various non-medical industrial applications much sooner. Among the neat tricks supposedly possible with this sort of system is the production of proteins using artificial amino acids (the modular building blocks of proteins), which could have any number of unexpected properties.

FAB just raised $21 million in a second funding round. Its investors included SV Life Sciences and Alta Partners. FAB also just named Daniel Gold, formerly a vice president at Human Genome Sciences, as its new CEO.