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When CEO Ben Lamm steps into the spotlight, it’s usually to talk about his efforts bringing extinct animals back to life. Once a far-flung idea, Lamm and the company he heads, Colossal Biosciences, have proven they can pull it off.
That wow-inducing moment came last year when Colossal unveiled “dire wolf” pups created with gene engineering techniques that leveraged a rewritten genome made from preserved DNA.
Born with 20 dire wolf traits, the modified gray wolves now boast large, muscular frames, sharper teeth and a distinctive howl that’s been absent from earth for over 10,000 years. But the fair-haired canines are just the tip of what Lamm and Colossal hope to achieve.
Similar to the way NASA’s effort to launch humans into space once triggered a frenzy of technological advances in areas like energy production and materials science, Colossal bills its de-extinction work as a starting point for waves of adjacent innovations. And while its research is focused on animals, Colossal aims to break ground in areas that could impact human health.
In fact, its work in areas like disease...