Ayana Bio, a company specializing in the development of bioactives for consumer products through the use of plant cell technology, has appointed Frank Jaksch as CEO. Jaksch founded ChromaDex, the manufacturer of an NAD-boosting supplement called Tru Niagen, where he served as CEO and presently serves as board chair.
 
Ayana Bio launched in September 2021 as a Ginkgo Bioworks venture and uses proprietary plant cell technology rather than agricultural production to create bioactives for human nutrition, a method which promises to overcome supply chain challenges. Today, many of these ingredients can only be produced through either agriculture or foraging. Limited natural resources and volatility caused by climate change are, according to the company, leading to “shortcuts” on purity, safety, and sustainability of product on the market today.
 
“Through my decades in the natural products world, I’ve experienced how sourcing botanical ingredients from the wild or agriculture is not sustainable,” said Jaksch. “Supply chain issues have impacted the botanicals industry for years, and more recently this year, war and climate change driven weather events have made it worse. As a result, product quality and consumer trust has suffered. Plant cell technology will revolutionize how the industry sources our most beneficial plant bioactives, and Ayana Bio can make these powerful ingredients more accessible to the world.”              
 
Jaksch has spent more than 25 years in the food, beverage, and dietary supplement consumer products space. Jaksch sits on the board of directors for the Natural Products Association and is a recognized global expert on natural products chemistry.
 
Ayana Bio’s product pipeline includes bioactive compounds from ginseng, berries, cocoa, ginger, and other botanicals. Through a partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, Ayana Bio can rapidly analyze its plant cell library to identify superior cell lines. From there, the company grows and scales the cell lines using standardized cultivation methods in stainless steel tanks. The technology yields plant biomass with the identical molecular makeup of the plants found naturally, but produced without land, irrigation, fertilizers, or pesticides required by agriculture. Further, the process removes standardization and environmental preservation problems that occur due to agriculture-based supply chains, and is resilient to climate change.
 
“Synthetic biology has incredible potential to support human and environmental health, and we’re proud to enable innovators like the Ayana Bio team to launch on Ginkgo’s platform,” said Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. “Frank’s understanding of where to apply plant cellular technology to fill unmet needs in nutrition and complementary medicine coupled with Ginkgo’s platform for cell engineering has the power to transform the category.”
 
“Extraction from agriculture is the past. Ingredient cultivation is the future,” said Effendi Leonard, Ayana Bio’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “We rely on plant-derived molecules for many things in our daily lives, and Ayana Bio’s mission to democratize plant bioactives without agriculture limitation is not an easy feat. Ayana Bio is uniquely positioned to be able to leverage the most advanced life science technology, computation, and cellular cultivation all under one roof to bring Ayana Bio’s mission to fruition.”