In Washington, Lumen Bioscience, a synthetic biotechnology company developing a novel bio-based product development platform, raised $13 million of new capital to scale up Lumen’s first product launch in 2018. Lumen Bioscience is the first company to successfully use modern biotechnology tools in Spirulina, a blue-green algae that is widely grown for use in food, cosmetics and nutritional supplements.
Lumen’s tools and methods use Spirulina to make high-value proteins and other molecules for foods, cosmetics, medicine, and industry. Traditional biotech platforms, many based on yeast and E. coli, have proven unsuitable for the large-scale production of certain classes of proteins and other biologics. With Lumen’s technology, Spirulina has the chance to join these as an important production platform for the biotechnology industry.
In collaboration with researchers at leading universities and research institutions in Seattle’s medical tech hub and nationwide, Lumen is also exploring numerous therapeutic applications of its core technology.