Understand our Platform’s innovative capabilties
Light travels incredibly efficiently. The way light penetrates cell cultures depends on a number of factors, including wavelength, cell density, and media conditions. Using our AI-powered, closed-loop sensing and illumination system, we make continuous adjustments to deliver the desired light to the cells. Before we build a light delivery system for a partner’s application at scale, we use simulations and small-scale experiments to tweak our existing illuminator designs to fit your reactors, process, and target performance metrics, and budget.
We strive for optimal control of cells at every scale, which is why we do extensive modeling and simulation to predict the illumination needs at different scales. But don’t take our word for it: Minami et Al. recently published an independent simulation study that shows effective stimulation of bioreactors with sizes of up to 80,000L at maximum cell densities.
Living organisms have the ability to sense light because of light sensitive proteins (LSP). These naturally occurring proteins are found everywhere, from plants and bacteria to human retinas, and exist to detect and respond to light. They can do this very quickly to cause action in cells within seconds.
Proteins are at the heart of everything a cell does, from perceiving signals from other cells to switching genes on or off. By attaching LSPs to proteins that you want to control within the cell, Prolific makes it possible to precisely control subcellular biology using light. When met with light, which acts as a signal, these LSP can precisely control key functions within cells.
Prolific unlocks dynamic control by pulsating light in specific patterns, intensities, and wavelengths to activate cellular functions when and where it matters most, which is a gamechanger for biomanufacturing.
Our photomolecular platform brings together genetic tools, hardware, and closed-loop software to precisely control and optimize cellular behavior to more efficiently produce superior bio-product solutions across wide-ranging applications, from food to pharmaceuticals.
Methods currently used to make bio-products are limited to imprecise, inefficient, and expensive control levers, like temperature, chemicals, and proteins to indirectly control cells. Prolific’s platform brings together safe and effective tools to unlock unparalleled, direct control, and precision.
Our platform is cell line agnostic; we have developed CHO and bovine cell lines that partners can utilize, or they can use their own.
There are thousands of light-sensitive proteins, and they are activated all over the spectrum, but most exist in red and blue. We are focused on a core set of these wavelengths currently and will continue to expand this control set.
Currently, we can engineer two to three orthogonal, light-controlled specific functionalities into a single cell line. It’s possible to expand this if we invest more time/resources. The functionality limit is case specific and solutions are customizable. Functionalities that are needed at the same time can be controlled simultaneously with the same wavelength.
We procure LSP from natural sources like cabbage, spirulina, and mustard plants and genetically attach these proteins to targets of interest within the cell in order to control sub-cellular processes with light.
Light is a universal input, understandable by both biological and mechanical systems, allowing AI to steer and optimize biology.
AI can control our process in real time, gathering data along the way. Every time our platform successfully produces a target molecule, it learns from this data to create efficiencies, so our technology is continuously improving.
We believe light is the superior way to control biology. Where existing biological controls rely on changes to the growth environment or expensive, inefficient, and imprecise molecular tools like chemicals and proteins to indirectly control cells, we use light for specific, precise, and 100% reproducible cellular control.
Prolific has brought together leaders in the field of optogenetics, which uses light to control biological processes, to build upon its tools. Its photomolecular biology platform is the first to commercially harness optogenetics, alongside proprietary hardware and AI, to bring diverse applications to market across biopharmaceuticals and advanced nutrition.
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants and other organisms convert the energy of (sun)light into chemical energy to power their activities. Prolific’s platform isn’t using light as an energy source, but as but as a signal to control cellular function via LSP (or molecular switches), with far-reaching applications from food to life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Our process is incredibly efficient. Unlike photosynthesis that requires a constant and very large amount of light, we leverage efficient quantities of light only when needed in a closed-loop system to turn cellular mechanisms “on,” “off,” “up,” or “down” to control cell functions in a way that’s non-invasive, tunable, and reversible.
While cultured meat is one possible, and exciting, output from our process, it’s one of many across biopharmaceuticals and advanced nutrition.