Synthetic biology companies surpassed 400 in 2016

The number of companies in the synthetic biology industry globally has almost doubled over a five-year period, a report shows.

There were 220 companies in this space in 2011, while last year this total was 411, according to the annual Industry Investment Update released on Monday by SynBioBeta, the community of entrepreneurs, investors, policy-makers and enthusiasts devoted to the growth of this field.

In fact the growth in companies slowed for the second-year running in 2016, rising by 24 compared to 41 in 2015 and 53 the previous year. Substantially more than $1 billion was invested into the sector for the first time in 2016, with most of the funding coming from Silicon Valley tech investors, the report notes.