b.next Opens San Francisco Plant to Standardize Synthetic Cell Manufacturing
The startup is stabilizing a fragile biotech supply chain by producing 'Cytosol,' an open-specification substrate for synthetic cell engineering.
San Francisco-based b.next has operationalized a dedicated manufacturing plant to produce Cytosol, a core substrate designed to standardize synthetic cell engineering. The move aims to transition the field from a fragmented academic pursuit into a scalable engineering discipline.
The company has already shipped more than 100 kits to approximately 20 laboratories globally. The facility, constructed between late 2025 and early 2026, produces Cytosol based on the PURE (Protein synthesis Using Recombinant Elements) system. This complex biochemical environment consists of 36 proteins, 31 small molecules, 43 tRNAs, and ribosomes. To enable this, b.next developed an open-access set of PURE plasmids and protocols to replace restrictive commercial versions, first achieving detectable output in the summer of 2024.
The Supply Chain Crisis
The pivot toward industrial manufacturing was driven by systemic instability in the biotech reagent market. Synthetic cell research relies heavily on the PURE system, but the field has long suffered from a lack of open specifications and a brittle supply chain. This crisis peaked in 2023 when critical tRNA supplies disappeared from major providers Roche and Sigma, leaving researchers without the essential components needed to maintain their experiments.
Originally, the b.next team focused on improving interoperability through the Nucleus open platform. However, the disappearance of these key reagents revealed that the infrastructure supporting synthetic biology was too fragile to support rapid scaling. By internalizing the production process, b.next sought to eliminate the dependency on a few restrictive commercial vendors.
Shifting to Engineering
This infrastructure shift is significant because it decouples the design of synthetic cells from the struggle of reagent procurement. By providing a standardized, open-specification substrate, b.next allows researchers to focus on designing specific cell modules—such as energy production and control systems—rather than spending years troubleshooting the production of basic reagents.
According to the b.next team, building industrial-grade infrastructure was not the original plan, but they describe it as a "critical next step for synthetic cells to grow from an academic effort to solving global-scale problems."
Future Outlook
As the company continues to distribute Cytosol kits, the industry will be watching whether this open-access model can successfully democratize synthetic cell research. While the manufacturing plant is now operational, the long-term impact will depend on the adoption rate among global labs and the ability of the Nucleus platform to foster a collaborative ecosystem of cell modules. For now, the focus remains on stabilizing the supply of the PURE system components to prevent further research bottlenecks.