Insempra, an IZB-based biology-powered company enabling businesses to make superior products in partnership with nature, announced a strategic investment in Solena Materials Ltd (‘Solena’), a synthetic biology company, at the end of July. Solena, a spin-out from Imperial College London, develops synthetic proteins for high-performance clothing fibers.

The investment will allow Insempra, formerly Origin.Bio, to accelerate its strategy of harnessing new technologies to advance biological production processes, creating naturally superior products to drive the regenerative revolution. Solena will be a major part of Insempra’s platform to deliver high-performance, intrinsically sustainable ingredients for a broad array of industries.

Solena is using computational design to develop new classes of synthetic proteins to produce high-performance clothing fibers, which can absorb large amounts of kinetic energy. Insempra will accelerate the development and production of these synthetic proteins on an industrial scale, offering better, biobased solutions to the petrochemically sourced, non-biodegradable materials or fibers extracted from nature or animals, such as silk, currently used in the textile and clothing industries. This technology also reduces other environmental impacts such as the rise of microplastics in water bodies coming from washing petrochemically-sourced textiles.

Jens Klein, founder and CEO of Insempra and CEO of Solena Materials, commented: “We are hugely excited by this investment in Solena, which will help to accelerate our market-first approach to develop superior, intrinsically sustainable ingredients. We look forward to fast-tracking Solena’s development and production of their unique synthetic proteins to develop customized, high-performance fibers for a variety of applications.”

Dr James MacDonald, inventor, co-founder and CTO of Solena Materials, added: “The team and I are very excited to make this technology a huge success.”

Professor Paul Freemont of Imperial College London, added: “This investment from Insempra recognizes the potential of our technology to revolutionize high-performance fabrics, and their supply chains. Together, we can harness our synthetic biology capabilities to develop, produce and manufacture a new class of superior, more sustainable fiber technology.”

Insempra, a co-founder of Solena, will be the sole contributing shareholder in Solena, which is based at Imperial College’s Translation & Innovation Hub (I-HUB) in White City, London. Solena’s Board will be comprised of Dr James MacDonald of Solena, Professor Paul Freemont and Professor Milo Shaffer of Imperial College London, and Jens Klein and Andreas Heyl of Insempra.

Insempra combines bioscience and technology to make superior products with nature
Insempra is a biology-powered company enabling businesses to make superior products with nature. We combine bioscience and technology to grow matter for new and better products.

For too long, businesses have relied on chemical industrialization processes and petrochemicals, depleting our planet’s limited resources. That’s why we are committed to drive the regenerative revolution to manufacture at scale in collaboration with nature.

Led by a hand-picked team of biologists, technologists and entrepreneurs with rebel hearts, Insempra is here to create a new school of thought and collective action. The time to restore the balance between people and the planet is now. We don’t wait for change. We do what needs to be done to grow a better future.

Learn more about Insempra at insempra.bio

Solena Materials develops protein-based fibers
Solena is a protein materials design company. We use world-leading computational design, machine learning, and automation to accelerate the development of bespoke materials targeted at multiple sectors, from fashion apparel to medical textiles. Our new protein-based fibers will replace materials extracted from nature such as silk and petrochemically-derived materials, to create a new world of biodegradable, functional and sustainable smart materials for consumers, industry, and the planet.