Twist Bioscience secures $50m to advance DNA Synthesis Platform
The San Francisco, CA-based company plans to invest part of the funds in “the emerging vertical market opportunity presented by storing digital data in DNA” as well as “forward integration toward drug discovery,” said Twist Bioscience CEO Emily M. Leproust, PhD.
The company has raised $259m since its inception in 2013 and has seen an increase in demand across several areas where companies use its services, Leproust told us.
This includes pharmaceuticals/biotech customers who use the platform to support the drug discovery process as well as next-generation sequencing for target enrichment and detection of disease-causing genetic variations, she said.
“We have used our proprietary DNA synthesis platform, which delivers precision at a scale previously not available, to develop a portfolio of diverse products for two large market opportunities – the synthetic biology market through our gene and oligo pool offerings, and the next-generation sequencing market through our exome and custom target enrichment solutions,” Leproust explained in the press release.
Twist Bioscience has a second site in South San Francisco and international offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. In February, the company opened a new 2,500 square-foot office space in the San Diego, CA area.
The company also in February announced the commercial availability of several new products to enhance next-generation sequencing, including its Twist Human Core Exome Kit and its Custom Panels offering.
As of February, the company had shipped more than 150,000 genes in the last 12 months.
