The rapid growth of the global synthetic biology industry is being driven primarily by a wealth of new and exciting start-up companies. These innovative young start-ups and more mature SMEs have received ∼$6.1B investment since 2015 and its estimated that they will have achieved an estimated global market value of $14B by 2026.

Professor Paul Freemont, Co-Director of SynbiCITE, discussed the synthetic biology industry and the opportunities it is creating in a recently paper published in The Emerging Topics in Life Sciences entitled “Synthetic biology industry: data-driven design is creating new opportunities in biotechnology”.

In this fast changing industry, new applications and product areas are continually being identified, with a growing number of companies now becoming involved in consumer biotechnology products and living therapeutics.

However, the ethos of the synthetic biology field, in terms of open technology sharing and democratisation, may be challenged by financial and market realities that result in synthetic biology corporations and technology monopolies.

Read the full paper here.