Ashley Beckwith has spent years of her academic and skilled profession focusing on the intersection of biology, materials, and manufacturing to more efficiently create medical solutions. When she realized that this technology may very well be applied to plants and plant-based materials, an area that desperately needed it, she decided to switch gears.
“Life on Earth is only as safe as our global plant populations, and right now our plant populations are in a real crisis,” Beckwith told TechCrunch. “Almost 40% of our plant species are at risk of extinction. Forest landscapes untouched by humans have shrunk by 12% [in 2022]. Plant resources are being limited on all fronts.”
Beckwith took her knowledge of biomanufacturing, the means of using microorganisms and cell cultures to produce biological molecules and materials on a industrial scale, and launched Foray Bioscience in February 2022. The company uses biomanufacturing to grow crop-free plant materials, seeds, and molecules.
Biomanufacturing has been around for about 100 years, Beckwith said, but until now it hasn’t had many practical applications for plants. Because each plant species is so different, there was no one-size-fits-all approach to cell culture, which made bioproduction with plant cell cultures labor-intensive. Foray seeks to change this with its database approach; provides predictive insights and experimental guidance to speed up the research and development process for each plant species.
“At Foray, we are developing these advanced plant-free manufacturing tools to require fewer resources and start giving more,” Beckwith said.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup raised $3 million in a seed round led by ReGen Ventures, an Australian company focused on supporting technology that helps restore the planet’s resources. Engine Ventures, Understorey Ventures and Superorganism also participated in the round. The startup has already raised $3.875 million in total funding and plans to expand its team.
Beckwith said fundraising has taken some time because what the company is trying to do doesn’t fit directly into one category, but moderately at the intersection of many, from manufacturing to biology to environmentalism. Beckwith is used to that “weird ball” feeling. She said the reason she began the company was because there was no natural environment for the research she was doing in plant bioproduction.
“I was in this weird, interdisciplinary bubble,” Beckwith said. “It became really obvious to me when I was writing my Ph.D. If this research was to move forward and progress, I had to take it to the next iteration. Due to the newness of the field, it didn’t really have a place in academia or manufacturing. We had to create our own space.”
She described taking the science out of the lab and founding the company as “a long journey.” The startup now works with other corporations to help them get their biomanufacturing up and running, designing R&D plans for clients and helping them develop commercialization strategies.
Beckwith also envisions that this work will enable Foray to create a genetic banking system for plant seeds, especially those who are not easily documented, and to make it possible to grow recent seeds from just a few cells. It can even help with conservation efforts.
There are many similarities between Foray’s technology and mission and the rise of lab-grown meat and seafood. Beckwith said that while the science isn’t exactly the same, each share the same goal of replacing the products and resources people are accustomed to getting from nature with a lab-grown option that’s less harmful to the environment. While the means of producing lab-grown meat is a bit further along, Beckwith is optimistic about Foray’s future.
“With the scale of the growing human population and the growing demand for natural resources, it is really important that we manage these natural resources as efficiently as possible so that we can keep them for longer,” Beckwith said. “This tool really allows us to bypass the natural constraints that exist in the wider world and get more from less, so we are able to reduce our impact on these natural resources but still have access to the goods we’d like to survive as a society. “