Open Source Biotech Consumables

Open Source Biotech Consumables(chimera.labs.oreilly.com)

48 points by pittsburgh 11 years ago | 17 comments

pcrh 11 years ago |

If a start-up wishes to make big bucks in biohacking it has to deliver a product that is in wide demand by the general public.

The reagents on sale mentioned (Taq, antibiotic resistance genes and DNA ladders) are to biotech what solder and resistors are to electronics, i.e. very low value products of no use to the general public.

The real hurdle for true "biohacking" is the cost of laboratory facilities and equipment, which can easily run into a million dollars as soon as high speed centrifuges, -70 C freezers, sterile incubators and hoods, equipment for analysis, certified waste disposal facilities, etc, etc, are taken into account.

Compare this to making an app, which costs mostly the developers time and some hardware she already has lying around.

patcon 11 years ago | |

Yes, everyone wants their startup to make big bucks, but how do you do get to the stage of the startup's cheap rapid iteration trope when reagents cost an arm and a leg. There might not be big cash in the domain of cheap reagents, but I would humbly suggest this must be disrupted before biotech gets really exciting. Or at least that we need to consider that maybe it's a foundational need that should take some precedent :)

pcrh 11 years ago | | |

So, what can start-ups do to reduce their costs?

For one, they should focus on areas where the reagents are not expensive, e.g. identifying novel natural biological extracts with new activities, consumer genetics (as in 23 and me), or areas such as horticulture. They should avoid things like stem cells and drug development (as opposed to discovery).

frisco 11 years ago | |

This is what my startup is working on! Check out https://www.transcriptic.com. It's still early days and we'd love feedback.

dnautics 11 years ago | | |

I'm not bullish on this field. While there are certain biological operations (e.g. sequencing) that are "embarassingly parallelizable" (to borrow a CS concept), most are not, and require aggressive "interrupt handling".

I make a mutation of enzyme X, then test it. Ok, the procedure works, now let's scale it to 48 mutants. Uh oh, the procedure stopped working at #28. Why? Because the batch number for our competent cells from NEB changed and it no longer accepts our plasmid. (real situation) Etc.

pcrh 11 years ago | | |

That looks interesting, but a bit confusing.

Imagine I want to do a PCR but can't do it myself, I must really a) have no bio facilities to speak of, b) don't know anyone else who does. What am I then going to do with the PCR product? Further, presumably I must also sent you the sample to amplify, and what kind of samples am I likely to have if have no bio facilities?

You might want to read the comments made elsewhere about something similar: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/07/09/outsourced_a...

funkjunky 11 years ago |

I've been waiting so, so long for this to happen. I got my biotech undergrad degree at a smaller school that didn't have the funding necessary to pay for common lab reagents, so our professors illegally generated their own taq polymerase and stuff (I think PCR was patented at the time). DIY biotech makes me excited about the field again, and this is a critical step in making that dream a tangible reality. Thank you!

patcon 11 years ago |

This topic popped into my head during the HOPEX talk on biohacking yesterday. The thought was that diybio enthusiasts might be a perfect partner for the OpenBazaar project, who are building a decentralized p2p marketplace. It's mostly associated with the drug trade atm.

I mentioned it in #openbazaar on irc, and they seemed interested. Toronto has one of the largest diybio groups in north america, and I've been to a few meetup, so I'd love to help look into it when I'm back in Toronto next week

frankly, I would be thrilled if the nixhe groups of both cryptocurrency and diybio found symbiosis :)

HarryHirsch 11 years ago |

My slightly informed opinion about biotech consumables is that a plasmid construct is only half of the deal. What you need as well - and that is indispensable - is a competent technician who will isolate and purify the overexpressed protein and run assays to confirm activity.

Competent technicians don't grow on trees. You are looking at a salary of 60 kUSD/year + benefits, and then you start running numbers if reagent kits might actually be the cheaper option.

Thriptic 11 years ago | |

While its true that someone needs to do the things which you mentioned, basic protein expression and purification are standard skills learned at the undergrad level for biochem / molecular bio majors. Depending on the composition of the plasmids, it should be very straight forward, and presumably the manufacturer will also provide plasmid-specific protocols to help. An existing lab tech / lab member / the investigator themselves could quickly pick up this work, or a tech could be had for a lot less than 60 grand a year.

kayhi 11 years ago |

Our start up has been tackling this space of over priced chemicals and supplies for the past four years. We've worked with the majority of the DIYBio labs in the USA.

We've taken the approach of working with small manufacturers that already make products that are repackaged and marked up more than 10x.

John (author) is right that there is a huge need for more affordable reagents especially recombinant protein.

pcrh 11 years ago | |

This seems to be an area for disruptive approaches. I think one of the problems is for labs to find the cheaper suppliers who produce quality reagents. Most times such suppliers will be producing only a few reagents and so can't afford to have the markets presence of someone like VWR, Fisher or Sigma.

Perhaps an ebay-like marketplace with user feedback would be the way to go?

refurb 11 years ago |

Wow! That's pretty cool. The inability to order biological reagents as an individual is a huge barrier to people doing this stuff on their own.