NEW YORK – Colossal Biosciences said Tuesday that it has secured $50 million in funding from private investors to form a foundation to support conservation projects.
The Colossal Foundation will focus on the application of Colossal's technology through partnerships for species that can benefit from genetic rescue, biobanking, and the creation and use of reference genomes. Additional aspects of its work may include accelerating species adaptation, creating genetic resilience through biotechnology, finding lost species, and utilizing technological advancements including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computational biology to better understand animal behavior and ecosystems.
In addition to species-specific work, the foundation will conduct R&D for conservation and develop a biobank for threatened species.
"Colossal went to a handful of their private investors and asked them to support their expanded conservation initiatives and partners with new capital," a Colossal spokesperson said in an email.
Colossal is a spinout from George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute. It has raised at least $225 million, including a $150 million Series B round in January 2023. In 2022, it spun off Form Bio to commercialize its bioinformatics platform.
The foundation will also take up Colossal Biosciences' work supporting the sequencing of the elephant genomes with the Vertebrate Genomes Project and Rockefeller University, provide grants to the International Elephant Foundation for sequencing of the Asian elephant genome, and more.
Initial species-specific projects include efforts focused on the vaquita, a type of porpoise; northern white and Sumatran rhinos; red wolf; northern quoll; ivory-billed woodpecker; and pink pigeon.
Current R&D projects include the Colossal drone-based anomaly detection system used by Save the Elephants, a vaquita acoustic monitoring program, and an AI-enabled orphaned elephant monitoring system used by Elephant Havens in Botswana.