U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken Visits Antheia to Discuss Biotechnology Innovation
In early May, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited Antheia, HQ in Menlo Park, California for a tour of our labs and a panel discussion with innovators in the biotechnology industry
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken Tours Antheia, Discusses the Importance of Biotechnology Innovation in the United States
Visit demonstrates U.S. commitment to bolstering the domestic biotechnology industry and onshoring critical supply chains, including pharmaceuticals Menlo Park, Calif., May 6, 2024 – Antheia, the pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturer transforming essential medicine supply chains, today hosted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken for a tour of its state of the art labs, as well as a discussion on biotechnology innovation and leadership in the United States. During his visit, Secretary Blinken met with a panel of industry and policy experts from Atomic AI, Ginkgo Bioworks, MycoWorks, Stanford University, and Twist Bioscience. The discussion was moderated by Christina Smolke, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder at Antheia and focused on the critical role of biotechnology to U.S. national and economic security, the need for strong international partnerships to develop solutions for global good, and the urgency to maintain U.S. leadership in this critical emerging technology. “We are grateful to Secretary Blinken for his time and attention today, as well as the U.S. government’s continued commitment to advancing biotechnology and biomanufacturing,” said Dr. Smolke, CEO and co-founder, Antheia. “With the ongoing support of both the public and private sectors, a future with resilient, sustainable pharmaceutical supply chains, minimal disruptions to critical drug supplies, and equitable access to essential medicines for all is well-within reach.” On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” According to the White House, “global industry is on the cusp of an industrial revolution powered by biotechnology.” As part of the scope of the biomanufacturing executive order, the Department of State is working to promote and protect U.S. technologies and the global bioeconomy. By Antheia’s estimates, advanced biomanufacturing can enable domestic production of over 50 percent of the key starting materials (KSMs) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) underlying essential medicines at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional manufacturing. Antheia’s first product, thebaine, is a key ingredient used in the production of several drugs on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines lists. Antheia’s processes have been validated at scale, demonstrating this technology’s viability, commercial-readiness, and societal impact. About AntheiaAntheia is the next-generation pharmaceutical ingredient producer transforming essential medicine supply chains to end drug shortages. Using its novel whole-cell engineering approach, Antheia’s biomanufacturing platform enables the reconstruction of biosynthetic pathways of unprecedented complexity in yeast cells and the scaling of fermentation processes to commercial levels. This highly flexible approach enables on-demand, agile, and resilient biomanufacturing of critical pharmaceutical ingredients, replacing legacy approaches that cannot support the needs of modern healthcare. For more information, visit www.antheia.bio. MEDIA CONTACT: Mission North for [email protected]
Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits the Bay Area
Antony Blinken tours Antheia biotech lab, emphasizing its potential to address nationwide medicine shortages by overcoming supply chain issues with advanced bio-technology
Future of Pharma Insights: Q&A with Olon Group
We sat down with Andrea Conforto, VP of CDMO at Olon Biotech.
PharmaSource: Antheia and Olon Extend Biomanufacturing Partnership
Antheia and Olon have announced a continuation of partnership, leveraging Olon’s fermentation infrastructure for the manufacture of Antheia’s early products
Antheia and Olon Continue Partnership for Biomanufacturing Antheia’s Pipeline of KSMs and APIs for Essential Medicines
Antheia and Olon established this partnership in 2022 to leverage Olon’s fermentation sites across Italy. Olon has since played a pivotal role as a CDMO for scaling Antheia’s biomanufacturing processes and producing its Biosynthetic KSMs (key starting materials) and APIs.
Antheia’s 2023 in Review: A Year Of Transformation
Dear colleagues, friends, and supporters: As we approach 2024, we want to take a moment to look back over an absolutely astounding year of progress for our business and give thanks to the many who made it possible. Nearly a decade of hard work culminated in an industry-first achievement here at Antheia. In August, we announced our first successful commercial-scale fermentation run of our debut product, thebaine. For Antheia, it represented a moment in our history where an entirely new model for pharmaceutical supply chains was proven viable. This achievement also marked an industry inflection point, heralding a new frontier of scalable biomanufacturing of highly engineered microbial organisms with 25-30 complex, heterologous biosynthetic steps and more than 20 enzymes. Over this past decade, we’ve taken this scientific innovation from theory, to lab bench, to viable commercial production. With this year’s debut of our first products in a pipeline of 70+ key starting materials (KSMs) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), we’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible in terms of using this platform to produce critical pharma ingredients for essential medicines. As early pioneers in this field and stewards of this proven and scaled technology, our determination to bring this biomanufacturing solution to the world has only grown with this year’s progress. The need and urgency for this solution persists; this year the healthcare industry faced relentless shortages in critical drug classes, including central nervous system therapies, antimicrobials, fluids/electrolytes, hormones, and chemotherapies, while the pharmaceutical industry continued to struggle to resolve these shortages in a timely and effective manner. Over the past five years, we’ve seen the occurrence of new molecule shortages triple, with a striking 84% of the drugs in shortage being generics. Combined with the persistence of up to 50 new drug shortages annually and an average shortage duration of 1.5 years, pharma supply chains underpin a dire situation in healthcare that demands immediate attention and comprehensive resolution. Fortunately, we see a brighter future. Our estimates show that more than 50% of the drugs on the U.S. FDA Essential Medicines list can be made via biomanufacturing technology. With this reality now within reach more than ever before, the U.S. – and more broadly, the world – is quickly realizing the potential of synthetic biology as an advanced, and much-needed manufacturing solution. Just this year, we were proud to contribute to The National Action Plan for U.S. Leadership in Biotechnology. The plan outlines a series of policy recommendations with the end goal being an “agile, rapidly-scalable, distributed biomanufacturing base that efficiently produces the majority of essential medicines and makes affordable medicines available to everyone who needs them.” As further legislative efforts have – and continue to – emerge, we are encouraged to see the industry and the U.S. government moving in the same direction, toward the same shared goal: to capture the full potential of synthetic biology and unlock solutions that will materially improve the availability and supply chains of essential medicines. As we approach 2024 and this next chapter of our business, we want to take a moment to recognize what truly makes Antheia so great. It isn’t just the continued scientific innovation or our operational development that makes 2023 such an impressive year of transformation, but the phenomenal team of people behind it. We believe in a world where patient care and health equity are never jeopardized by global pharma supply chain vulnerabilities, and our growth would not have been possible without the exceptional colleagues that are dedicated to this mission each and every day. Our wins this year, and our success next year and beyond, are thanks to our team and our many supporters – we look forward to another big year as we advance our commercial strategy in 2024. Cheers, Christina Smolke, PhD | CEO and Co-Founder Kristy Hawkins, PhD | CSO and Co-Founder
Addressing the Drug Shortage Crisis: Transforming Pharma Supply Chains
Drug shortages in the U.S. have become an urgent issue over the last few years. So much so that in 2020, the Administration issued an Executive Order for the U.S. FDA to establish an Essential Medicines List of critical drugs that are deemed medically necessary, with the ultimate goal of identifying ways to protect and provide for the American public’s undisrupted access to these essential medicines. Ultimately, pharmaceutical supply deficits have continued to plague U.S. healthcare systems, with cancer drug shortages being the latest impacting patients. Oncology drug shortages in particular carry dire consequences for cancer patients given the urgency of treatments, leaving many with limited care options. Simultaneously, healthcare providers are being forced to make extraordinarily difficult decisions with the drugs they do have, rationing doses or delaying care in order to balance the needs of their patients with limited supplies. Compromising care and treatments leaves doctors and patients alike in a no-win situation – and one that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Unsurprisingly, recent shortages have sparked many healthcare professional and patient groups to ask Congress to intervene, leading to the recent introduction of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Risk Assessment Act. We believe it will be one of many policy efforts to seek solutions, as public discourse continues to build regarding the extreme lengths individuals have gone to secure life-saving medicines. While the request is simple – generate more supplies, and quickly – the solution is not. Pharmaceutical supply chains are extremely complex and face many factors that are easily disrupted and can quickly trigger a drug shortage, including natural disasters, climate change, geopolitical events, and manufacturing facility issues, to name a few. These ever-growing threats and challenges continue to add pressure to the urgent need for innovative and nimble solutions to optimize pharma supply chains, and ensure that the public has reliable access to all critical, essential medications. Antheia was founded in 2015 to address the threat of drug shortages through agile biomanufacturing techniques, and we have witnessed the urgency of realizing our mission with each passing year. Currently, we are working to bring a robust pipeline of Key Starting Materials (KSMs) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) – the critical components of a medicine that produce the intended effect – to market, across a wide variety of therapeutic areas, including oncology, as well as neurology, respiratory, anti-infective, gastrointestinal, endocrinology, and hematology. Our platform and pipeline are intentionally designed to ensure reliable, consistent, and equitable access to critical drugs, to avert supply disasters by decoupling KSM and API production from current agricultural sourcing, and over time, make drug shortages a problem of the past. Biomanufacturing has the power to transform pharmaceutical supply chains. By leveraging engineered yeast and fermentation-based manufacturing processes that can be activated quickly, on-demand, and potentially anywhere in the world, we can ensure that patients and providers have reliable access to critical medicines. The cancer drug crisis we’re experiencing right now is not the first, but it could be the last if we systematically transform our pharmaceutical supply chains and invest in advanced biomanufacturing technologies. Follow Antheia on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Leveraging Synthetic Biology for Resilient Pharma Supply Chains and Accessible Medicines
Antheia was founded in 2015 by Dr. Christina Smolke, CEO and Dr. Kristy Hawkins, CSO and is based in Menlo Park, California. Antheia’s co-founders are pioneers in the fields of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering and are applying these technologies to transform pharmaceutical supply chains in order to better support the needs of 21st century healthcare.
Advancing the U.S. Bioeconomy and Building Resilient Pharmaceutical Supply Chains
We continue to see the U.S. government setting policy priorities that underscore the importance of both building a robust American bioeconomy and strengthening domestic pharmaceutical supply chains – two core pillars of Antheia’s business and technology.
