Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup working to revive dire wolves, mammoths, dodos and other extinct animals, has raised $120 million from investors, with director Peter Jackson once again joining the funding.
Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup working to revive dire wolves, mammoths, dodos and other extinct animals, has raised $120 million from investors, with director Peter Jackson once again joining the funding.
The new investment is a follow-up to a $200 million funding round the startup announced earlier this year, which raised its valuation to $10.3 billion, Bloomberg reported.
Colossal said it had made a «major leap in bird science» by growing pigeon cells in the lab, which the startup’s scientists believe opens up «new ways to protect endangered birds and possibly bring them back to life».
The new funds will, among other things, go towards building an avian research center in Texas, said Colossal Biosciences CEO Ben Lamm. Investors in the latest funding include the American Fund for Innovative Technology, founded by ARCH Venture Partners Robert Nelson and Peter Jackson, best known as the director of the «Lord of the Rings» films.
The startup’s latest work on reviving the dodo focuses on pigeon cells. Colossal said it has managed to grow primary stem cells from pigeons, a species closely related to the dodo. Unlike mammals, scientists cannot use cloning technology to revive avian species. Instead, they must create stem cells that can then become sperm and eggs used to create the next generation of birds.
Previously, the company had no clear timeline for its attempts to revive the dodo, but now Colossal Biosciences believes it can bring back the flightless bird in five to seven years.
Colossal previously announced that it had revived the extinct wolf species Aenocyon dirus, which American science fiction writer George R.R. Martin used as the prototype for his direwolves in the book saga «Game of Thrones».
The company previously surprised scientists with the news of creating mice with «mammoth features.» This is a step towards its goal of making hairy genetically modified elephants and populating the Arctic with them. The company copied mammoth DNA to create a very hairy mouse with long golden fur and accelerated fat metabolism, like a mammoth.
Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church, a co-founder and chief genetic consultant at Colossal, are also creating another startup called Astromech, which is not affiliated with Colossal. Although it has not yet been officially announced, the startup has already raised $30 million.
Astromech will use artificial intelligence and robotics to figure out why and how species evolve in certain ways, and will also explore why some animals have evolved greater cancer-suppressing capabilities than others.
