Taking on PFAS (forever chemicals) with synthetic biology – Nicole Richards

In this episode, we welcomed Nicole Richards, CEO of US firm Allonnia, a company that promises to enzymes and microbes to degrade environmental contaminants.

Now the topic of PFAS, per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as forever chemicals, is getting a lot of attention.

Known for their unbreakable bonds, they’re used in pretty much everything, from non-stick saucepans through to waterproof jackets, and military firefighting foam applications. Following a regulatory limit introduction by the US Environmental Protection Agency, as well as corporate fines to chemical companies responsible for PFAS pollution, there has been almost a space race of start-ups in this space promising destruction techniques.

It was great to get Nicole’s perspective because Allonnia is quite unique. It was launched out of Ginkgo Bioworks Ferment Consortium with a $40 million Series A funding round, which was then boosted by another $15 million funding round from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency.

Now, $55 million for a start-up is ana extremely rare position to be in! Nicole discusses this, as well as making the leap from almost 30 years in chemical engineering over to the start-up world.

There’s a lot of discussions on PFAS, the impact on human health, and how technology innovation will help to solve this problem. Nicole comes at it from an interesting perspective of how synthetic biology will play a role.

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We’re delighted you can join us on this voyage of discovery, as we journey down The Stream.

Special thanks to this season's sponsor, Raymond James.

And our charity partner, Frank Water.

And thanks to our knowledge partners: British Water, WWF, Water Alliance, DCU Water Institute, SurplusWater25, Earth and Environmental Science at Berkeley Lab, Water Foundry and Atlantean Media.