present

2023

Catalyse 2022

Jan. - Mar. 2022
Coming from 9 different universities across the UK to form 20+ teams, and combined forming a cohort of 300 students & researchers, the Catalyse accelerator featured a 5-week program giving entrepreneurial individuals their first exposure into running a startup in biotech.

The best teams were selected to pitch their ideas to win £5,000 (generously provided by Hummingbird Ventures) and bespoke legal advice from Potter Clarkson.

Demo Day was an in-person event held at the Francis Crick Institute, with a drinks reception afterward.
Sponsored by:
Our Finalists

GambitBio

Home self-testing for early cancer detection

Sporadicate

Non-toxic targeted biofungicide system against fungal plant disease

Theraport

Novel technology for loading drugs into exosomes

ProTecc Bio

Rapidly unlocking undruggable targets for future cancer therapies

Vasonic

Tackling the treatment gap in cardiovascular disease with better image interpretation

MyRNA

Bringing women's health back to women

📰 Journal Club No°20

Double JC with Dr. Yang Liu & Kirill Sechkar
May 26, 2022
Dr. Yang Liu presenting "Repurposing of RNAs as CRISPR RNAs by reprogrammed tracrRNAs" (Nat. Comm.), and Kirill Sechkar presenting "A linear programming-based strategy to save pipette tips in automated DNA assembly".
Sechkar K, Stan GB., Synth Biol (Oxf). 2022.

2022

📆 Seminar No°05

Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology with Prof. Bill Adams
Aug 3, 2021
Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology: Book launch & feature!
Find the YouTube recording here!

📰 Journal Club No°19

Behzad Karkaria: "Automated Design of Synthetic Microbial Communities"
Jun 19, 2021
Machine learning for microbial communities, Part II. This time with Dr. Behzad Karkaria, presenting his work published in Nature Communications!
Karkaria, B.D., Fedorec, A.J.H. & Barnes, C.P., Nat Commun 12, 672 (2021).

📰 Journal Club No°18

Veronica Greco: "Harnessing the central dogma for stringent multi-level control of gene expression"
Jun 5, 2021
From DNA to mRNA to proteins: learn about the central dogma of molecular biology, re-imagined for multi-level control of gene expression.
Greco, F.V., Pandi, A., Erb, T.J. et al., Nat Commun 12, 1738 (2021).

Hummingbird VC Fellowship

Oct. - Dec. 2021
SynBioUK partnered with Hummingbird Ventures to offer a UK-wide Venture Fellowship programme.

Over 3 months, our fellows collaborated with Hummingbird's Investment Team to explore a new market area in the biotech sector. They focused on emerging area within life sciences, learned how to evaluate exciting new start-ups in the space, and presented findings at the end of the fellowship.
Collaboration with:

Zahra Khwaja

University of Cambridge
Natural Sciences, BA

Arqum Anwar

University of Cambridge
Cancer Biology, PhD

Edward Polgasse

University of Cambridge
Therapeutic Sciences, MPhil

Yasmin Siraj

University of Cambridge
Bioscience Enterprise, MPhil
2021 Fellows

Molly Steadman

Imperial College London
Synthetic Biology, PhD

Jack Williams

Francis Crick Institute
Chemical & Structural Biology, PhD

Carolina Monck

Imperial College London
Synthetic Biology, PhD

Georg Wachter

Imperial College London
Synthetic Biology, PhD

Isabel Zhang

Francis Crick Institute
Biosciences, PhD

Emilie Gerard

University of Manchester
Computational Chemistry, PhD

2021

Panel Discussion

Industry Talk: Software in Biotech
Apr 6, 2021
Biotech companies are reaching unprecedented heights of innovation by embracing software, machine learning, and robotics in every part of their work. From genetic engineering and drug discovery to autonomous labs, there is a growing need for software engineers in the life sciences. Join us for an exciting industry talk co-hosted by Imperial College DoCSoc and SynBIC to hear from leaders in the field about how software engineers are making an impact and what the future will look like.

📰 Journal Club No°17

Amroo Al-Busaidi: "Molecular & Epidemiological Characteristics of Major SARS-CoV-2 Variants"
May 22, 2021
Science is constant confrontation of the unkown. At the cutting-edge of research today we discuss discoveries in SARS-CoV-2 variants, and their epidemiological characteristics.

📆 Seminar No°04

Ron Weiss (MIT): Mammalian Synthetic Biology - Programmable Organoids and Cancer Immunotherapy
May 4, 2021
Hello SynBio friends! We are excited to let you know about Ron Weiss' talk on Mammalian Synthetic Biology: Programmable Organoids & Cancer Immunotherapy.
Find the YouTube recording here!

📰 Journal Club No°16

Behnaz Nowrouzi: "Enhanced production of taxadiene in Saccharomyces cerevisiae"
May 8, 2021
"When yeast turns into a pharmaceutical factory...". This is the subject of Nowrouzi's paper published in Microbial Cell Factories!
Nowrouzi, B., Li, R., Walls, L.E. et al., Microb Cell Fact 19, 200 (2020).

📰 Journal Club No°14

Javier Cabello Garcia: "Handhold-mediated strand displacement"
Apr 10, 2021
Learn about a nucleic acid based mechanism for generating far-from-equilibrium assemblies through templated reactions.
J. Cabello-Garcia, W. Bae, G. V. Stan, T. E. Ouldridge, ACS Nano 2021.

📰 Journal Club No°15

Jack Suitor: One-Pot Synthesis of Adipic Acid from Guaiacol in Escherichia coli
Apr 24, 2021
This journal club Jack Suitor will present a paper on one-pot synthesis of adipic acid from guaiacol in Escherichia coli.
J. T. Suitor, S. Varzandeh, S. Wallace, ACS Synth. Biol. 2020.

📰 Journal Club No°13

Matt Tarnowski: Creating sustainable futures: technologies are political and why this matters
Mar 27, 2021
This journal club Matt Tarnowski will give his talk on creating sustainable futures and the importance of politics within technology sector.

📰 Journal Club No°12

Apple Chew: Genetic modification of western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii) for phytoremediation of RDX
Mar 13, 2021
This journal club Apple Chew is presenting a paper on genetic modification of western wheatgrass for phytoremeditive purposes.
Zhang L, Rylott EL, Bruce NC, Strand SE., Planta. 2019.

📰 Journal Club No°10

Neythen Treloar: Deep reinforcement learning for control of microbial co-cultures
Feb 13, 2021
Machine learning for microbial co-culture control with Neythen Treloar.
Treloar NJ, Fedorec AJH, Ingalls B, Barnes CP., PLOS Computational Biology 16(4), 2020.

Journal Club

Mengxi Li: Cell-free biosensors for rapid detection of water contaminants.
Feb 27, 2021
This week at our Journal Club, Mengxi will be presenting a Nature Biotech paper on cell-free biosensors for rapid detection of water contaminants.
Jung, J.K., Alam, K.K., Verosloff, M.S. et al., Nat Biotechnol 38, 1451–1459 (2020).

📰 Journal Club No°09

Giovanni Maddalena: A partially self-regenerating synthetic cell
Jan 23, 2021
Join us next Saturday at 2pm GMT to hear Giovanni cover a cool new paper on partially self-regenerating synthetic cells for our Journal Club!
Lavickova, B., Laohakunakorn, N. & Maerkl, S.J., Nat Commun 11, 6340 (2020)

📰 Journal Club No°08

Ahmed Hassan: A single-cell synthetic oscillator
Jan 9, 2021
Ahmed Hassan will present a synthetic oscillator to monitor bacterial variability in the mammalian gut. Come learn about genetic circuits, microbiomes, and bioengineering.
Riglar, D.T., Richmond, D.L., Potvin-Trottier, L. et al., Nat Commun 10, 4665 (2019).

📰 Journal Club No°06

Maxim Karpov: SynBio 2020-2030
Dec 19, 2020
Join us to take a look at and discuss Christopher Voigt's list of the biggest upcoming SynBio products/innovations for 2020-2030.
Voigt, C.A., Nat Commun 11, 6379 (2020).

📰 Journal Club No°07

Moeez Khan: The Second Decade of Synthetic Biology
Dec 26, 2020
Join us this Saturday to retrospectively review the accomplishments of Synthetic Biology from the past decade and discuss the limitless possibilities of the future!
Meng, F., Ellis, T., Nat Commun 11, 5174 (2020).

📆 Seminar No°03

SynBio.Oxford presents: IDT and Colorifix
Nov 23, 2020
Join us to learn more about Integrated DNA Technologies and Colorifix, and what they are working on in the space of high-throughput DNA production and microbial manufacturing.

📆 Seminar No°02

Domitilla del Vecchio, MIT: Context dependence of biological circuits
Nov 11, 2020
Engineering biology has tremendous potential to impact applications, from energy, to environment, to health. As the sophistication of engineered biological circuits increases, the ability to predict system behavior becomes more limited. In fact, while a system’s component may be well characterized in isolation, its salient properties often change in surprising ways once it interacts with other systems in the cell. This context-dependence of biological circuits makes it difficult to perform rational design and leads to lengthy, combinatorial, design procedures where each component is re-designed ad hoc when other parts are added to a system.

📰 Journal Club No°05

Clare Robinson: FlopR Calibration and Normalisation of Plate Reader
Nov 7, 2020
Dr. Clare Robinson will be discussing the importance of calibration and plate normalisation: towards a higher reproducibility % of experiments run in - and with - biology and biological organisms.
A.J.H. Fedorec, C.M. Robinson, K.W. Wen, C.P. Barnes, ACS Synth. Biol. 2020.

📰 Journal Club No°04

DNA printer for nanoscale manufacturing
Oct 24, 2020
Rafael Carrascosa Marzo (PhD Researcher at Oxford in the Turberfield Lab) talks about new novel DNA nanotechnological printer in works.
Benson E, Marzo RC, Bath J, Turberfield AJ., Sci Robot. 2022.
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