I am so clucking eggcited that Neion Bio is finally coming out of its shell. 🐣 Today, pharma uses Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells to produce biologics like Keytruda and Humira in huge stainless steel bioreactors. Merck spent $1B on a single Keytruda facility.
In early 2024, Elliot Hershberg wrote that chicken eggs are much more efficient bioreactors. They run on grain and water, produce six grams of protein per unit, and we already farm them at massive scale.
Sam Levin, who we previously backed at Melonfrost, and Dimi Kellari explored the frontiers of this research, which they could get their arms around because the cutting edge stuff is happening in a very small number of labs around the world.
They realized that the time was right to build a company that uses nature's bioreactors to produce drugs at a fraction of the cost. In today's NYT article, Sam predicts that the cost can be 1/10th or even 1/100th of the current cost, and that just 3,900 hens could meet global Humira demand.
I'm proud to back Sam, Dimi, and the Neion Bio team as they work to hatch the balk of the world's biologics and dramatically lower the cost to produce critical drugs, right here in NYC. And I'm sure they're happy that I can share my chicken puns with all of you instead of just replying to investor updates with them.
Check out what they're up to in the NYT article below.