BOSTON & DALLAS– Breaking, a plastic degradation and synthetic biology company, gestated at Colossal Biosciences based on a core discovery out of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, launches today with the announcement of their discovery, X-32, which they will develop to address the global plastics crisis. In its natural state, X-32 can degrade polyolefins, polyesters, and polyamides leaving behind carbon dioxide, water, and biomass in as little as 22 months. With future synthetic genetic edits, the team is focused on making X-32 faster, more efficient, and more effective with a harmless environmental impact.
“I’ve spent my career in synthetic biology and protein engineering with the hope of developing something this transformational,” shared Breaking co-founder and CEO Sukanya Punthambaker, Ph.D. “In the future, our solution will be able to work across terrestrial and marine environments to break down today’s greatest threat to humankind/our existence: the plastic that is choking our world.”
The world’s plastic problem is growing increasingly more severe:
- 5,000 million tons of plastic are sitting in landfills, oceans, and our ecosystems.
- 390 million tons more of plastic are produced each year; up 22,400% since 1950.
- Plastics have been found in Antarctic sea ice and in marine animals in deep ocean trenches.
- Even bottled water contains almost a quarter of a million nanoplastic fragments,
X-32 is a breakthrough microbial discovery that destroys multiple types of plastic by breaking down hydrocarbon chains across different chemical structures quickly. X-32 works with polyolefins (the toughest plastic bonds), which include products like packaging materials, polyesters such as PET bottles, and polyamides such as nylon. In its current state, X-32 has been shown to degrade up to 90% of polyesters and polyolefins in less than 22 months. This is a significant improvement over other solutions which target only a single plastic type.
The microbe starts to work immediately. In lab tests, X-32 started to break down paint brush bristles, fishing wire, and dental floss in less than five days. If left untreated, paint bristles brushes can take 450-1,000 years to decompose, fishing wire can take 600 years, and dental floss would take 80 years.
Concurrently, X-32 utilizes plastics as a primary carbon source and needs no pre-treatment, sorting, cleaning, or decontamination and it emits carbon dioxide, water, and biomass during the degradation process.
Today’s primary recycling processes are inefficient and either degrade the plastic to a point it becomes unusable or further contributes to other environmental harms. Crushing and grinding destroys the fibers in plastics, making them unsuitable for re-use. As a result, only 9% of plastic makes it to a recycling plant. The most efficient disposal method, incineration, furthers the carbon crisis and releases noxious chemicals. But, Breaking’s X-32 has no known negative environmental ramifications.
The team is now going to utilize their expertise in synthetic biology to engineer X-32 into a faster, more efficient, and uniquely effective solution with the goal of breaking down more plastic, faster. They will first focus on identifying the enzyme used by X-32 which they believe breaks down the carbon bonds within plastics. By isolating the enzyme, then editing that enzyme, and applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to evolve more efficient enzymes, the team will build an improved solution for wide commercial distribution.
“Breaking is solving one of the biggest problems on our planet. They are using the natural world as inspiration and layering on cutting edge technology to transform how we break down plastics,” said Jim Kim, General Partner of Builders VC, and a lead investor in Breaking. “This is going to be one of the biggest breakthroughs of the decade and I’m excited to be part of it.”
“We are excited to see how Colossal Biosciences has enabled our novel discovery to break away from its competitors in the plastic remediation space by developing a bioinspired technology that can degrade many types of plastics that are threatening our environment. This can be accomplished without pretreatment and the breakdown products could be used to produce other valuable materials and commodities. This is what sets Breaking apart from the field,” said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director and Core Faculty of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences.
The team has identified numerous applications including utilization in wastewater, food waste and marine applications where X-32 and its further enhanced versions will be added to current microbe-based degradation programs. And, within the next few years, the team hopes to utilize their technology to ensure that newly created plastics have a faster degradation period and smaller overall impact on the environment.
“The first in-field pilots will target the food waste and composting industry,” shared Kent Wakeford, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Breaking. “Food waste into landfills is costing $16B in taxpayer dollars per year. But that food can’t be composted because of plastic contamination. If we can remove the plastics, we can save the government a lot of money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and help improve overall quality of life.”
Additionally, as X-32 degrades plastics, it generates biomass containing different biomolecules that may also hold immense value in various industries. These molecules unveil potential for utilization in the production of biofuels, biodegradable plastics, and high-value chemicals. The team will continue to investigate the use cases as they more deeply explore X-32’s enzyme secretion and biomass byproduct.
“We have entered an era in which our environments and bodies are at risk to micro and nano particles of polymers (plastics) that we once trusted. We have also entered an age of exponential technologies in which we can see and seek the nuances and continua of polymers. Harmful-to-helpful is not nearly natural vs synthetic; it depends on size, shape, and location of the polymer particles. For example, polyethylene has the same set of bonds as beeswax, just longer. We are ‘Breaking’ these and reusing the parts in beneficial reconfigurations,” said co-founder and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Core Faculty at Wyss Institute, Dr. George Church.
With 40 million tons of food waste in the U.S., Breaking sees the opportunity to reduce roughly 48 million tons of CO2 in the U.S. as both profitable and mission-work.
“Our breakthrough natural approach to breaking down plastics is more environmentally friendly than most existing solutions,” notes Vaskar Gnyawali, co-founder and CSO of Breaking.
“We could not be more thrilled to launch Breaking from stealth from Colossal. The technologies co-developed by the Wyss Institute provide limitless applications to address our planet’s pervasive plastic contamination challenges,” said Breaking co-founder and Colossal CEO Ben Lamm. “Part of our core mission of ecosystem restoration at Colossal can only be achieved with the removal of plastic that plague our ecosystems and negatively impact biodiversity.”
Breaking has raised $10.5 million in a seed round prior to this announcement. The company was co-founded by the Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University Donald Ingber, world-renowned biotech entrepreneur and Harvard geneticist George Church, CEO Sukanya Punthambaker, CSO Vaskar Gnyawali, Alba Tull, Kent Wakeford, and Ben Lamm.
