Foray Bioscience is breaking down the barriers of bringing biomanufacturing to plants | TechCrunch

Ashley Beckwith spent many years of her academic and professional career focused on combining biology, materials, and manufacturing to create medical solutions more efficiently. When she realized this technology could be applied to plants and plant-based materials, a field that desperately needed it, she decided to switch gears.

“Life on Earth is only safe if we have a global plant population, and today our plant population is really in trouble,” Beckwith told TechCrunch. “About 40% of our plant species are at risk of extinction. Forest landscapes untouched by humans have decreased by 12% [in 2022]These plant resources are being squeezed on all fronts.”

Beckwith took what he knew about biomanufacturing, which is the process of using microorganisms and cell culture to produce biological molecules and materials at a commercial scale, and launched Foray Bioscience in February 2022. The company uses biomanufacturing to develop harvest-free plant-based materials, seeds, and molecules.

Beckwith said biomanufacturing has existed for about 100 years, but it hasn’t had many practical uses for plants until now. Because each plant species is so different, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to growing cells, which made biomanufacturing with plant cell culture laborious. FORAY wants to change that through its database approach; it provides predictive insights and experimental direction to help speed up the research and development process for each plant species.

“At FORAY, we’re developing these advanced tools for plant-less production to demand less of these resources and give back more,” Beckwith said.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup has raised a $3 million seed round led by Regen Ventures, an Australian firm focused on supporting technology that helps restore the planet’s resources. Engine Ventures, Understory Ventures, and Superorganism also participated in the round. The startup has now raised a total of $3.875 million and plans to build out its team.

Beckwith said it took a while to raise funds for this round because what the company is trying to do doesn’t fit into one category but falls somewhere in between several categories, from manufacturing to biology and conservation. Beckwith is used to facing this “weird” feeling. He said the reason he started the company was that there was no natural home for the research he was doing in plant biomanufacturing.

“I was in this weird cross-disciplinary bubble,” said Beckwith. “When I got to the final stages of my PhD, it became very clear to me. If this research was to move forward and progress, I had to take it to the next step. Because of the newness of the field, there wasn’t really a place for it in an academic setting or a manufacturing setting. We had to create our own space.”

He described taking the science out of the lab and starting the company as a “long journey.” The startup is currently working with other companies to help them set up their biomanufacturing by creating a research and development roadmap for their customers and helping them develop a commercialization strategy.

Beckwith also believes that this work will help FORRE create a genetic banking system for plant seeds, especially for seeds that are not easy to document, and help grow new seeds from a few cells. This will also help in conservation efforts.

There are many similarities between FORAY’s technology and mission and the rise of lab-grown meat and seafood. Beckwith said the science isn’t exactly the same, but the goal of both is to replace the products and resources humans get from nature with lab-grown alternatives that are less harmful to the natural environment. While the journey of lab-grown meat is a little further, Beckwith is optimistic about FORAY’s future.

“With the scale of the growing human population and our increasing demands on natural resources, it’s really important for us to be as efficient as possible with those natural resources so that we can sustain them for a long time,” Beckwith said. “This tool really allows us to move beyond the natural constraints that exist in the wider world and get more from less so that we can reduce our footprint on these natural resources, but still have access to the things that we need to survive as a society.”