NEW YORK – December 19, 2022 – As Synonym develops the biomanufacturing infrastructure and capacity for synthetic biology companies to scale, we are enthusiastic that the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s (PCAST) recent report underscores how critical biomanufacturing is to the United States’ future economy.

The report illustrates how bolstering domestic manufacturing capacity, supporting a diverse workforce, and pursuing scientific breakthroughs will ensure U.S. leadership in the bioeconomy. Synonym was founded on the belief that our future food and materials systems will be built using biology. We were thrilled that the report lays out several concrete ways the federal government can accelerate the growth of biomanufacturing.

Additionally, the report, officially named “Strengthening Biomanufacturing to Advance the Bioeconomy”, provides a roadmap for policymakers and stakeholders so that they can create the conditions for the bioeconomy to grow and thrive in the coming decades. The recommendations in the report focus on capacity-building, regulatory predictability, and national strategy. For Synonym, the report addresses many of the gaps we were born to fill.

As biology becomes the default mode of production, it becomes a platform for decarbonization, reduced dependence on fossil fuels and more job opportunities across rural America. However, we can’t realize our biological future without scaled biomanufacturing capacity. We believe that the public and private sectors must work in partnership to scale up U.S. biomanufacturing. And while the recommendations in the report are directed towards the federal government, they also send a very strong signal that the bioeconomy is poised to grow with the right mix of support from diverse stakeholders.

The first and biggest gap the report identified was around insufficient biomanufacturing capacity in the U.S. We have heard this refrain over the course of this year as we have gotten off the ground, we hear it in our customer conversations, and it’s why Synonym exists. By productizing and standardizing commercial-scale biomanufacturing capacity, we can enable companies to bring their biobased products to market in a way that ensures quality and affordability.

To help bioeconomy stakeholders find biomanufacturing capacity, we created a tool called Capacitor. Not surprisingly, most of the fermentation facilities we found support smaller-scale (i.e. bench and pilot), not commercial-scale biomanufacturing. This is why we support the report’s recommendation to develop biomanufacturing infrastructure hubs across the country. The hubs will catalyze the bioeconomy by bringing together government, industry, and academic partners to enhance manufacturing processes, train a workforce with necessary skills, and share infrastructure.

We also support the other recommendations in the report to create more predictability and certainty in the regulatory process for biobased products and to develop a national strategy for biomanufacturing. By solving gaps in these areas, the government will help ensure American competitiveness in biomanufacturing. At Synonym, we are doing our part to support a market for biomanufacturing. We cannot do it alone. The PCAST report provides a great foundation for scaling the bioeconomy and we urge the Biden Administration to adopt its recommendations.