Biotechnology and the Pandemic?

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When the pandemic hit, a lot of folks in the sciences looked for ways to respond. Ginkgo realized that in order to have an effective pandemic response, it was going to need to be a multi-pronged approach. We needed to find therapeutics to treat people who are already sick, and we needed to come up with vaccines to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.

Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine would not have scaled without Ginkgo Bioworks. Reshma Shetty, co-founder and COO of Ginkgo – slated to go public via SPAC acquisition at a reported $15 billion valuation – explains how biotech innovation can build a better future now. Ginkgo's platform already serves industries from food and agriculture, to materials, to healthcare. Shetty acknowledges that engineering genes is a high stakes pursuit, and says Ginkgo is trying to pair the ambition of Silicon Valley with a "higher level of care" than consumer tech companies like social media have demonstrated. The key, Shetty says, is creating an unstable equilibrium – propelling progress but not at the expense of principles.

Read a transcript of this interview at: mastersofscale.com

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