Noor: All right, we have Ben Lamb, founder and CEO of Colossal here today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Ben: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

Noor: Yes. I think a lot of people have heard just these little very cool tidbits about de extinction, but can you tell us a little bit about the origin story of why you guys started Colossal?

Ben: Yeah, I mean, I'm a software guy and a systems guy, and so I wasn't out to do the extinction. This kind of came out of the brilliant mind of George Church, and so I met George. I was talking to him about synthetic biology, how we could leverage synthetic biology for many different cases. I thought that the kind of like explosion of AI coupled with, you know, compute and eventual quantum in the area of synthetic biology was pretty interesting.

And, um, you know, George kind of answered those questions in a few minutes. And then I asked him what else he had. He was working on in his lab. He went through a lot of different cool projects. I asked him if he had 1 project he wanted to work on, what would it be? And he said he wanted to bring back the mammoth, rewild it back into the Arctic, and then build tools and technologies for other endangered species.

Now, obviously, we've expanded that to include other species. It's going so, so far, so well.

Noor: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the big wins so far?

Ben: Yeah, so, uh, D Extinction, um, you know, you deal with some of this with your Line of work is like, you know, we're birthing life, right? And we're birthing life that we have to create embryos.

We have to create genetically modified embryos. We have to make sure we're making the right edits. We have to make sure that we are making the edits that don't have off target effects. We have to screen and sequence all of that. Then we've got to have it work in another animal because the extinct animal isn't alive.

Um, we even have a 17 hard problems, hard problems, hard

Noor: problems all the way through.

Ben: Yeah, so we've got to innovate along the entire path. And, um, that is, uh, you know, sometimes massively interesting and then, you know, you get through, like, you know, 80 steps and then, you know, step 81 is the 1 you weren't prepared for.

Right? And so it's definitely interesting. But as we have added additional species to the lineup, it's helped us be very thoughtful about how we approach the entire system. So it has the robustness to take on different 1, 000, 000 and 80 and and other types of, um, Uh, animal clades over time.

Noor: That's awesome.

I know you guys have a couple of species. I think most people know you guys for You know trying to resurrect the mammoth But do you guys have some other animals that you think are going to be a little bit easier a little bit less? In like insanely large to uh, yeah. So to bring, bring back. Yeah. So 20,

Ben: 22 months of gestation with elephants is kind of our core pain point there.

Um, uh, yeah. The Thialysine or Tasmanian tiger, uh, it's only a 13 and a half day gestation. Yeah. Which is amazing. Right. And, uh, when you think about it, and it's born the size of a grain of rice, so it actually can be gestated in its surrogate model is a fat tailed Dunn art. And so it can actually be birthed from that, which is amazing from a marsupial perspective.

Also, given the lack of placenta until the last day of gestation, it also is a great candidate for a model for initial artificial womb work, right? So how do we grow things fully ex utero, fully in an exogenous way? So it's um, it's a cool, it's a cool species, it's a cool project. Um, and then the bird projects have all kinds of other challenges and weird.

Thanks. We're now working on a couple of bird projects. We've only announced the Dodo, um, but we've got some other stuff that we're starting to do computational biology on that we're excited about too. So it's a handful of species. We've only announced the three, the Mammoth, Thylacine, and Dodo, but, um, you know, hopefully over time, if we see, uh, continued successes in Mammoth and Thylacine and Dodo, we'll announce more, but, you know, we've achieved iPSCs, induced pluripotent stem cells in elephant and in, um, uh, marsupials in our Fat tailed Dunnard.

We're very, very close. To primordial germ cells in, uh, pigeons, which is also never been done before. And then from a computational perspective, we've done all of the analysis we really need to do to really narrow in all of our core phenotypes or physical attribute targets for all 3 of our species. So, really, it's just now we're in the editing phase on 2 of those 3 species and, you know, if we can get to primordial germ cells.

Um, in the next, you know, six months or so on Dodo, then we'll be on track to start editing in Dodo, which is pretty exciting.

Noor: Wow, that's awesome. Do you guys have a sense for timelines? Like, what do you think is going to be the first?

Ben: Yeah, we always get asked about timelines and dinosaurs. Those are pretty consistent questions.

Uh, and so, uh, from a timeline perspective, uh, we've have announced that, uh, we think that by late 2028, we'll have our first mammoth calves. We do believe in that timeline, uh, yeah, most don't, uh, but we do, uh, we're pretty excited about it and, you know, if it slips, it slips, but we're pretty confident right now in our, in our timeline.

That's the only timeline we've, we've set. We haven't, we have not gone out there yet and, and set, uh, Other timelines, we felt like that was a very big, colossal very timeline that we we've set. So we're trying to do everything we can hit that 1. and then, you know, I think it is highly likely, though, that another species could show up before

Noor: got it.

Cool. And what are the kind of key steps, you know, as you go from this, like, you know, big area addition, addition schools to kind of some of those intermediate milestones, like, what's kind of the. The process that you guys go through to chat to sort of do you risk it and start getting closer and closer to that goal?

Ben: Yeah, so the 1st thing that we do is we have to make sure that we get enough ancient DNA and DNA samples and how do you guys get

Noor: that? Even like, I can't go call a guy and go get ancient DNA. How do you guys pull that up?

Ben: You know, people have this view, um, and in our new office and our new lab, we have this giant.

Mammoth that's like suspended in fake ice. And I think that's how most people think. They just think we find it and dry it off. In reality, it's a combination of, you know, some of it already has been sequenced and it's in, on servers and computers in research laboratories. Some of it, we have to go into the field.

So we actually do field expeditions. We have a team actually right now doing a field expedition for a bird project, which is pretty cool. We do a lot of that in collaboration with the Explorers Club, which is, uh, full disclosure, I'm a board trustee of, so we work very closely with them and all of their researchers and explorers.

And then some of it's like, you know, old school, like, Indiana Jones catacombs, like a museum, like the sub basement floor, right? Where it's like, you pull out the drawer, dust, like, gets in your face, and you, like, can't breathe. And then there's a jar with, like, a specimen in it that no one's seen since, like, 1910.

And so it's a combination, really, of, you know, uh, all three of those to get the best samples. And, um Okay, so

Noor: step one, get this ancient DNA. Get

Ben: the ancient DNA. And see what you got and then get more and more and more of it like the key is more is more is more in the world of ancient DNA. And then from there, we look and see what is its closest living relatives in the case of the Asian elephant or the way mammoth is the Asian elephant.

It's actually closer related to a Asian elephant than an Asian elephant is to an African elephant, which is kind of fun. And so it's about 99. 6 percent the same genetically. And then we start to do a lot of comparative genomics is where we built a lot of our own algorithms and our own models start trying to understand, like, what are the core genes in these different regions that drive that made a man with a mammoth and unique and then which of those genes in those changes changes drive a phenotype or physical attribute that we can manifest.

Right? So, in the case of the mammoth, that's like, we'll eat Uh, that's a dome cranium that's curved tusk and obviously subcutaneous fat layers and a couple other things that aren't as physically apparent when you think about mammoths. And so you do a lot of comparative genomics, and then we start with Asian elephant cells.

Right? And so many cases, when people think about Jurassic Park, they were taking like dino DNA and trying to like, throw, like, cram in ancient, you know, frog DNA and other reptiles and amphibian DNA into that of the ancient dino DNA. Instead, we kind of start with the frog DNA, right? We start with the Asian elephant cells because we took it from an Asian elephant, and we know it created an Asian elephant because we physically saw it, right?

And then we try to spend a lot of time doing that computational analysis. The better that we can be at computational analysis, and the more targeted we are on the core genes that drive change. The less edits we'll have to make, right? So the better we are in silica, the less we have to do in the lab, which is, which is pretty cool.

And so we're not just trying to fill in a bunch of holes in the mammoth genome, we're trying to down select what are the core genes that will drive that, the right phenotypes or behavior that we're looking for. And then what we do is we engineer that into those cell lines. And we've had to do all kinds of stuff like great immortalization constructs and And figure out how to regulate some of the, uh, other proteins that cause cell senescence and, and and whatnot.

And so we've, um, we have spent a lot of time on the culture condition of those cells as well as we have to ramp up the genome engineering capabilities in each one of those different species so that we ensure that, um, you know, we can deliver as many edits as we want. So over time we can deliver more and more and more, um, and, and, and drive even more phenotypes.

And, and in some cases we're also engineering and resilience and enhancements. With specifically mammoth. In elephants, there's a disease called EEHV, which they're all susceptible to, and it kills about 20 percent of baby elephants every single year. We don't want our mammoths to be, you know, our baby mammoths that we spend all this time and effort and money on, uh, to be susceptible to this disease.

So we are engineering in resilience to that disease. And then, you know, once you get to the point that you feel like you've got the right edits, you've done functional and molecular and all these different essays and tissue differentiation. So you can test it in the lab and in Petri dishes, then eventually you do that last step, that somatic cell nuclear transfer step, that cloning step of taking the nucleus and moving it from that somatic cell into that of an egg cell, and then you stimulate it and put it in it.

In the cooker, uh, to have it start working. It's magic.

Noor: Okay. That's interesting. So you basically take the naturally occurring sperm and eggs. Just do sort of almost conventional IVF to create that embryo of the closest related species. And then you do all the edits in the embryo. And then what day are you doing this?

How many cells are you guys working with?

Ben: Yeah, so we get to so, um, that 1st is in is in a single Excel. So we're doing this maximum transfer from a somatic cell single cell into an embryo. Okay. Cool. I guess I'm so technically day 0 and then we use a combination of stimuli, including a small current. Uh, so not to get too Frankenstein II, and then it starts the divisional process.

And then I'm not sure off the top of my head. I'm not a biologist, but I'm not sure off the top of my head when at what stage in the, like, the, you know, blast this development. Do we do those transfers? Um, it may be species specific. But it's a good question. I don't know if that meant

Noor: got it. So, in terms of the artificial wounds, like, it's sort of.

The goal to do artificial wombs in parallel with yeah, or what is the, um, why not just skip the whole article and just go straight to the surrogate tower? All

Ben: of our first species will be born the old fashioned way, right? But we do think that from a, um, scale perspective, right? Like, you know, elephants take 22 months to just eight rhinos take 15 to 16 months to just a.

Um, you know, and we're working on the northern white rhino project. If you can build a artificial wound that can support that life for that, that gestational season, well, then you can scale very quickly. Right? Because then you don't need, uh, 20 elephants or 20 rhinos. You can grow 1000 rhinos right in a warehouse.

Um, and then work with rewilding partners with them back into the wild. So I think that the, one of the many benefits of the artificial wombs, uh, specifically for conservation, will allow us to achieve scale. All of our first gen species will be, uh, all born through, you know, the normal means of, of, of iiv, I guess the normal means of IVF in extinct species.

Noor: I think it's pretty immature for all these animals. Right? So isn't there like a lot of work you guys have to do? Yeah, so

Ben: none of these are model species, right? So, like, we have to develop tools and technologies just for artificial insemination, let alone, uh, IDF implantation.

Noor: So,

Ben: um, so, yeah, we have to develop all that we've actually developed and even some of the precursors to our, um.

Artificial wombs we think could be pretty interesting. So we built this like pretty interesting hydrogel matrix, uh, that uses this microfluidics device and computer vision and sensors that kind of regulates it all and we've been able to keep embryos alive and healthier longer. Then what we've seen in, um, you know, what people have done with humans and other things, and these are non model species.

So, so I even think that some of the devices that we're developing that are almost like the Lego blocks to some of these larger systems, just these individual pieces to these systems are could be quite interesting in terms of human health care, you know, or cultivating embryos and endangered species.

Noor: It's amazing. Yeah. So it's like really difficult technical problems all the way across the stack. Yeah, it's,

Ben: it's, it's like, yeah, there's not one challenge here. Um, there's a thousand, but, you know,

Noor: And it's, it's, it's also the intersection of a bunch of different fields, right? Cause it's sort of like embryologists, you need to have, um, It's

Ben: fields that you would think should be working together.

Noor: Yeah,

Ben: they aren't working together. And so when you can create kind of that, like Manhattan project type model where you're bringing in all these, you know, tangential, but should be correlated scientists is pretty cool. Like, you get discoveries. Uh, I think we're seeing discoveries at a faster rate than we originally anticipated just because of that natural synergy, because, like, an embryologist may have some solution to sell media culture that you, the cell team hadn't been thinking of.

Noor: Yeah, I think from like a science project and epicness perspective, it's obviously 10. But how did you get investors excited about this? I feel like they're kind of like, hey, let's make something that makes money tomorrow.

Ben: Um, uh, want to invest in something that makes money tomorrow. We've, we've been very lucky in having long term investors.

We try to bring in a combination of like, really thoughtful. Really smart investors from a myriad of different fields, some biotech like Bob Nelson, some long term tech, like, you know, uh, Jim Breyer, some entertainment folks like, um, uh, uh, Peter Jackson, some folks that are all about telling stories and because there's huge narrative components to this, we work closely with the federal government, so In Q Tel is an investor, so we've tried to be very thoughtful about the investor group that we've brought with us.

To this, and we've been lucky. We've been very, very lucky that they've all really resonated. And, um, you know, we have some impact investors to that really just care about the impact side of it as well. So, all in all, I'm very. And so I'm really grateful for that kind of like mix because we couldn't go to just biotech investors because it's like, you know, when does a mammoth go through phase 1 clinical trials?

Right? And it's like, that's something that like, you know, well, I mean, Bob got it, right? But, you know, Bob's super smart. And so, um, different investors had to look at it from a different lens, right? Any of the technologies that we are developing. Could be massively transformative for numerous fields. Right?

And so, um, and then even in some of the full systems, like artificial wounds and whatnot, could be massively transformative for like society. And so I think we've been lucky to bring the right types of investors together.

Noor: Yeah, so what's the pitch to them? When do they, like, how,

Ben: um, that the pitch to them all changed.

Over time, right? You know, initially it was like, George Church thinks he can make a mammoth. We're pretty sure we can hire some scientists and we're pretty sure that's valuable. And that's kind of the pitch. Uh, and then that was the early stage since then. It's evolved and now there's technology applications to a lot of different fields.

Um, there's conservation and kind of that benefit. There's the kind of like, uh, history making component of it. That's pretty interesting. And then there is a huge opportunity for rewilding and biodiversity and carbon credits in, in, in the rewilding side. So we're working with indigenous people, groups, private landowners and governments around the world for rewilding different species and, um.

It's pretty, it's pretty awesome.

Noor: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, I think that most people don't realize just, uh, you know, how much damage is happening to a lot of the diversity of, uh, yeah,

Ben: when we started

Noor: the animals that used to walk all the

Ben: different spaces, we started the business.

And the original pitch deck, it was forecasted that we would lose up to 15, 1. 5 percent of all biodiversity between now and 2050. That number now is 50, so 5 0. That's not a good trend line, right? That's a pretty bad trend line. And so everyone recognizes that conservation works, it just doesn't work at the speed at which we're changing the climate.

So we need new tools in that fight. And so there are certain investors and governments that are like, That alone, if Colossal can develop tools and technologies and have a de extinction toolkit, their view is it's better to have a de extinction toolkit and not need it, than need a de extinction toolkit and not have it.

Why has that

Noor: drop been so precipitous? I mean, it's kind of

Ben: like the tipping point, right? It's like, you know, it's like, oh, it's, it's, it's 0. 75. And then it's, oh, it's 1. 5. Okay. I guess we could allow it to go to three. You know, I, I just think that the more we're watching nature and the more we're watching some of the rebounds and whatnot, sometimes it's very positive, but more so than not, it's, it's, it's negative.

Noor: Yeah, so is it primarily climate change or what's driving sort of combination?

Ben: It's deforestation. It's pollution. It's some, uh, cause climate change over fishing over hunting. You know, if you what's crazy about these ecosystems is while they are really resilient. And they do bounce back. If you take out their keystone species, the species that like, help drive a lot of the ecology of that system, then, you know, those are like large herbivores, large predators, or, um, environmental modifiers like beavers.

And so if you take out these different keystone species, it has this, what's called tropic downgrading effect, where you have this like trickle down effect where everything can fall apart very quickly. Or at least start to a degraded cycle.

Noor: So are those those keystone species? The 1 that people are targeting to basically preserve.

So we just

Ben: launched a foundation. But in addition, we launched our, our colossal foundation, which is a 50M dollar foundation focused on, uh, saving those 1 of our 1st projects is saving those. 50 or so East on species that, you know, if we lose them all, we can more than likely see a ecological collapse and in many systems.

Right? And so, um, that that project is 1 that we're pretty excited about because, you know, what we found is whether you love the extinction or not. Generally, everyone agrees that we should save animals and animals are more animals. No one wants to run around in earth with like, humans and rats and cockroaches.

Right? Like, we like biodiversity. It's a good it's it's generally good for the environment. It's good for us. Good for our psyche. It's good planet. So, um, generally speaking. It's a non politically polarizing issue. It's a non issue with conservation groups. And so, um, we found that, generally speaking, most people, you know, want to live in a world of abundance of animals than one of a, uh, without.

Noor: Yeah, I think there was a couple of news reports in the early part of the year about the white rhino. It's basically, you know, only. Two white rhinos left standing and those two females are unfortunate and fertile. So they're functionally extinct. But I think I remember reading that the IVF wasn't successful.

Could you maybe comment on that? We're

Ben: involved in that project. Now we got asked to be involved in it. Is there a genetic rescue partner? What's interesting is they have been successful. Dr. Thomas Hildebrand, who's one of our advisors has been massively successful extracting eggs. Um, from the dryness. Now, 1 of the 2, I forget which 1 aged out and they still do have semen from Sudan, who was the male that passed away a few years ago.

And so they have created 18 or 19 embryos to date. Um, and so they are now using southern white rhinos as the surrogates for the northern white rhinos, uh, and they had one attempt and they did fail to your point. Um, but, but that failure was not a failure in the IVF process or ingestion of the embryo. Uh, the, the, the mother, the, the host animal got sick, right?

Like if you would have, yeah, so it was just, it was a, it was a sickness that, that caused that termination. It's at

Noor: least not that there's some sort of,

Ben: no, no, no, but let's go further than that. Like where Colossal is coming in is we're helping think through what's called induced pluripotent stem cells, making stem cells from anything and then going through a process of gametogenesis.

So how do we make egg cells? So how do we not just extract egg cells? How do we make a million egg cells? Right. Um, but those would still be from like one or two founder lines. So the other thing that Colossal is doing is we're going back to museum specimens, other frozen zoos and locations and sequencing samples so that we can start to do genetic mapping and understand like a population genomics map so we can understand what lost biodiversity of the northern rhinos may have had 50 years ago, right?

And so we can actually take some of those samples. And those sequences and engineer that into future, uh, embryos.

Noor: Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize is that, okay, if you, if your, uh, population has gone, like,

Ben: that's easy. That's so easy compared to like making a mammoth.

Noor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sort of funny. Like, along the way of, of solving this problem, you get to solve a lot of other ones that are, that are equally, uh, exciting to a lot of people. That's exciting. Are there any other projects that you guys are working on? Any other? Functionally extinct or nearly extinct or rewilding projects that you've done.

Where

Ben: we launched the foundation, which was a big project, right? Yeah, to get that going. Yes, we did that. Uh, we have other projects coming down the line that we haven't talked about yet. We, we just announced our, uh, progress report, our report card in the thylacine, where we, uh, stacked 300 edits in one cell line, uh, for the thylacine, which is, which is monumental for genetic engineering.

Like no one's, no one's done anything like that ever. Um, and so we've done that. Um, we'd also have completed the thylacine genome to 99. 999 percent complete. So there's only like 45 gaps in the entire genome, which is insane. Everyone told, not everyone, but a lot of people were like, you'll never achieve that ever.

Uh, we did. And then we've created, this is kind of fun, and not pseudo in your world, but kind of in your world. Uh, uh, many more, or I don't know if all, but I know the ones we work in, uh, marsupials. Our seasonal breeders. And so we've created and been just like humans. Now we have the right compounds to induce ovulation, which isn't only important for our work, but it's helpful for critically endangered marsupials.

Right? So that we can create a 365 breeding cycle or these. Critically endangered, uh, marsupial species in managed care. Um, and so all of that, and then we create induced pluripotent stem cells in, in fat tailed elephants, right? So, um, uh, which we want for differentiation, gametogenesis, all these other things.

So, um, you know, I feel like our Thylacine project's ahead of schedule, which is nice. I think that 2025 will announce some cool stuff around Mammoth. It actually popped up on my screen, on another screen while we were talking about it. Um, so, uh, so yeah, so I think 2025 will be a cool year. Um, we'll show progress.

But these are all Long term initiatives, right? They're not gonna be done overnight.

Noor: Yeah, that's awesome. So, what's really different about running a company like this? I mean, obviously, you've run a bunch of other different types of companies with very different endpoints. So, what is it? You know,

Ben: I always thought engineers were hard.

Noor: Yeah,

Ben: scientists are a different type of hard, but they're great. And I feel even on my hardest day here. I feel massively inspired by our teams and and so, uh, you get some of the trade off of like, unlike software. It's not like you can make a bug fix and like, see it with biology. You have to have a little bit of patience.

Um, so I'm learning a lot of patients at times, but, you know, the, the trade off is. When you get these wow moments of discovery, it's um, it's like nothing else. It's pretty cool.

Noor: What's been, uh, the most different way in terms of, you know, running a software company? Like you're saying there's a much faster turnaround time and um, you know, it's kind of all people who are speaking the same language, like software engineers been like, what's been really different in terms of like your management style or just the culture of this company?

Ben: So, um, you know, we, we kind of run this company like a software company. So I kind of joke that sometimes the hardest thing that we've done at the company is, uh, reprogram our scientists to work in like Jira and Smartsheets. So, uh, we try to put like. You know, magic scientific discovery on, like, a quarterly basis, and that's hard.

That's, like, really hard to do. Um, and so we do, we do try to run it like a software or a product company. It's not like a think tank. You know, we have a, we've made promises to. To the world, to kids that are inspired by us, to our investors, so we really want to make sure that we maintain that cadence and deliver, um, you know, for them.

Noor: Yeah, um, what's been the hardest part so far?

Ben: Getting incredibly smart academics to realize that publishing a paper. Is not more important than making a mammoth I'm not against papers. I sometimes there's a couple like reddit's out there. It's like Ben's against scientific papers. It's like, no, but we're not an academic think tank.

Right? Like, like, we'll share stuff and papers sometimes take 8 months. Like, you know, how much work you can get done in 8 months. Right? Like, um, you get a lot of work done. Right? And so, um, you guys are doing paper. Like, so we've decided we're doing a couple of papers here and there to make. Okay. Keep everyone happy ish.

Um, but, but at the end of the day, you know, what, what is true success is like when you walk outside and do you, when you look at like our dodos, does it use, is it have the ancient DNA from a dodo? Does it look like a dodo? Is it ecologically functioned like a dodo? Right? You could write 1000 papers about that.

Right? But until you turn those right. Stack of papers into a walking dodo, very, very different.

Noor: Yeah. So have you been able to shift that culture because that culture is deeply ingrained. That is, that is. Yeah, it

Ben: is. Publish or perish. Publish or perish. You know, um, yeah, I mean, we, it's all about motivation, right?

So we try to get people the right, um, motivation.

Noor: Yeah. It's awesome. It's

Ben: all about creating incentivation and motivation.

Noor: Do you have a project or species that you're personally most excited about?

Ben: I mean, the mammoth's hard to beat, right? It's, it's, it's insanely, um, it's, it's insanely exciting and it's a massively important project.

So, um, it's, it's hard not to fall in love with it. Do

Noor: you guys have any plans for the dinosaurs?

Ben: You know, you, we get asked the dinosaur question all the time, uh, you cannot, there is no DNA for dinosaurs. We always break hearts on that. Amber is, uh, is a not, is a very porous material. Uh, it doesn't, it's not a good cargo of DNA.

And so, yeah, there's, um, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a porous. Uh, terrible material so that the movie does not work. Not that we've tried. It just doesn't work. Um, and so you

Noor: can just take the Komodo dragon and just try to, you know, engineer it to be larger, crazier, larger,

Ben: crazier thing. Yeah, so I look, I think from a genome engineering perspective, from a capability set, we will have.

Yeah, so for

Noor: the artificial wounds, like, what are the kind of the, the biggest challenges there? And what do you think is going to start working 1st?

Ben: So we're starting small, right? So it's easier to start on a mouse than a, um, uh, elephant. And so we've done a lot of studies on understanding the, all the chemical queuing, you know, what's the gas, nutrient, instrument exchange at all these different points.

Um, and so there's been a lot, the first couple years has just been in data collection, so a lot of data collection. Um, and kind of like in the reprogramming efforts, what we found is that you can start to understand, um, there it's a similar cocktail, uh, and it's just given at different times. Like when's glucose given, how much different species.

Um, and there's a little bit more, but there's roughly 9 placental types that are kind of like, that, that drive most mammalian development. And so, um, looking at placental, looking at those different placental types, understanding them, uh, what's beautiful for us is that the, you know, placenta is this magic, invasive alien that, you know, and I make this, I'm going to oversimplify this, but all we have to do right The right nutrients at the right time and give it the right environment in which it wants to invade.

And we have had successful mouse hatchings and invasions into a synthetic uterine wall, which is pretty cool. Like, it's, you know, it's early stages, right? It's like, that does not make you a mouse, but that you can get this. Placental invasion into that kind of sigilized in the material layer is pretty cool.

So, um, the good news is biology that biology does a lot for us. The bad news is it's a fickle system. Right? And so, you know, the, I think the hardest part of that. Even in the data collection or in the recreation, it is that placental interface layer is really important.

Noor: Why is the placental interface layer the hardest part?

Ben: Well, I mean, you got to give something the, uh, uh, right place where it wants to attach, can attach. Can live throughout a life cycle of with some movement of through that attachment in species like mammoths and rhinos that can grow quite large and so maintain that attachment. Right? And so you've got a, um, you know, hydrogels and certain, uh, those types of non polymers are probably not efficient.

For that long term, um, and you also make, you have to make sure that you've got kind of the, you know, super small, you know, uh, vessels for transmission of all of the nutrient that is pulled and you've got to make it available in the right consistencies. So, it's, it's, it's a, it's a hard, it's a hard project.

But when you think about it, like, people don't keep parts alive,

Noor: or

Ben: livers alive for like. Years, right? They don't, no one's done that. They don't do, I mean, you know, there's people like Doris Taylor and others are doing decelerations and then recelerations, but truly keeping an organ alive for, you know, 24 days has never been done before in a mouse.

Right? And keeping a placenta and womb, or womb like environment, you can engineer the womb like environment, but keeping the placenta alive in that environment for 22 months, right? So, um, do you think the

Noor: learning side of this will actually help with the organ preservation? Right? I do. I do.

Ben: I, I think that, I think some of the, I think it's a huge area that will come out of this.

I think that some of our, some of the tech that we're learning, um, you know, I think will be massive to keeping that could be, that could increase the organ transplant. Um. Uh, time, uh, hopefully one day indefinitely, right? And if you can do it indefinitely, then you're then from a developing nations perspective, you can get there much faster.

You know, right now that you are somewhat, um, confined where you can get organ transplant.

Noor: Yeah, so from a regulatory perspective, um, what are kind of what's like, the main process that you guys have to go through is

Ben: that mammoths don't have to go through, like, phase 1 clinical trials, right? It's not like anyone and we're not and we're not eating them.

Right? Yeah, so you tell and others from the government are investors in the business. So we, we work very closely with the IC and other groups. We keep all the different regulatory groups up to speed on everything, you know, even though we don't have animals today. We've started the process of what it would look like to rewild them in collaboration with indigenous people groups, various government agencies and the public at large.

So, uh, we've been, we've tried to be very, very thoughtful, you know,

Noor: even though we're not eating these or we're introducing into the wild. What I mean, is there a defined process as the FDA have to approve these animals going into the wild or even being created or, well,

Ben: I mean, it depends on if you're going to keep them in large, private ecological preserves.

If you're going to put them back in the wild, if it's going in the wild, the wild is kind of a weird term right now, right? Because the world's all cut off. There is not as much wild as one would think. Right.

Noor: Yeah,

Ben: I'm going to go back on public land. You need support also from the EPA. So we're doing ecological studies and surveys in Tasmania right now on dial scenery introductions.

Um, so, yeah, you have, you kind of have to go through all of it.

Noor: Yeah. So,

Ben: there's almost as much work on the rewilding side as there is on the science side.

Noor: Yeah. But from a regulatory perspective, just to do the work that you're doing, there's not any approval that are needed to just kind of do the research until the point where the animal's born.

Once the point where the animal's born, then does some, does the FDA have to approve where that animal ends up living or how does that

Ben: work? No, not right now. But like I said, it's the key is working closely with all of the agencies, because this is an entirely new field. Right? And so it's our job to be transparent, ethical and educate them and walk through that process with them.

Noor: Yeah. So what are the roles that you're prioritizing for the folks who want to join and be a part of this effort?

Ben: I mean, we're always hiring computational biologists, genetic engineers, cellular engineers. I mean, we're always, we're always hiring. We're ramping up our, we've made some great progress on our artificial womb team.

So we're making, um, uh, strong strides there too.

Noor: That's awesome. And what's the best place for, for folks to get in touch?

Ben: Just, uh, just go to colossal. com, um, or follow us on socials.

Noor: That's amazing. Um, is there anything else people can do to help and support the mission? No, I mean, no, can they donate or is that?

No, no,

Ben: I mean, look, uh, eventually we're gonna let people donate to our foundation to help species. Uh, but, but we've raised that first 50 million slug for that to get it going. But, um, no, I mean, you know, just ask us, uh, questions and give us feedback.

Noor: Yeah, I think it's just a mission that so many people are inspired about, and I think it's something that, um, you know, what's really cool is even before you get to, uh, the mammoth, there's so many, um, you know, really exciting contributions that you guys are doing.

Yeah, I mean, we're,

Ben: we have a lot of really smart women and men working on it day in and day out, and, you know, we're, it's, it's, it's very hard, uh, but it's rewarding work.

Noor: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for these amazing contributions and congratulations and all the success so far, but I really appreciate you sitting down with us and educating all these other, you know, software engineers and people out there in the world about, um, I think something that's captured the sci fi imagination for a while that you're making real.

So thanks so much for joining us.

Ben: We're going to keep working at it. So that's all we can do.

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