

Open Source Biotech Consumables - pittsburgh
http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000002036/ch02.html

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pcrh
If a start-up wishes to make big bucks in biohacking it has to deliver a
product that is in wide demand by the general public.

The reagents on sale mentioned (Taq, antibiotic resistance genes and DNA
ladders) are to biotech what solder and resistors are to electronics, i.e.
very low value products of no use to the general public.

The real hurdle for true "biohacking" is the cost of laboratory facilities and
equipment, which can easily run into a million dollars as soon as high speed
centrifuges, -70 C freezers, sterile incubators and hoods, equipment for
analysis, certified waste disposal facilities, etc, etc, are taken into
account.

Compare this to making an app, which costs mostly the developers time and some
hardware she already has lying around.

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frisco
This is what my startup is working on! Check out
[https://www.transcriptic.com](https://www.transcriptic.com). It's still early
days and we'd love feedback.

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dnautics
I'm not bullish on this field. While there are certain biological operations
(e.g. sequencing) that are "embarassingly parallelizable" (to borrow a CS
concept), most are not, and require aggressive "interrupt handling".

I make a mutation of enzyme X, then test it. Ok, the procedure works, now
let's scale it to 48 mutants. Uh oh, the procedure stopped working at #28.
Why? Because the batch number for our competent cells from NEB changed and it
no longer accepts our plasmid. (real situation) Etc.

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funkjunky
I've been waiting so, so long for this to happen. I got my biotech undergrad
degree at a smaller school that didn't have the funding necessary to pay for
common lab reagents, so our professors illegally generated their own taq
polymerase and stuff (I think PCR was patented at the time). DIY biotech makes
me excited about the field again, and this is a critical step in making that
dream a tangible reality. Thank you!

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patcon
This topic popped into my head during the HOPEX talk on biohacking yesterday.
The thought was that diybio enthusiasts might be a perfect partner for the
OpenBazaar project, who are building a decentralized p2p marketplace. It's
mostly associated with the drug trade atm.

I mentioned it in #openbazaar on irc, and they seemed interested. Toronto has
one of the largest diybio groups in north america, and I've been to a few
meetup, so I'd love to help look into it when I'm back in Toronto next week

frankly, I would be thrilled if the nixhe groups of both cryptocurrency and
diybio found symbiosis :)

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HarryHirsch
My slightly informed opinion about biotech consumables is that a plasmid
construct is only half of the deal. What you need as well - and that is
indispensable - is a competent technician who will isolate and purify the
overexpressed protein and run assays to confirm activity.

Competent technicians don't grow on trees. You are looking at a salary of 60
kUSD/year + benefits, and then you start running numbers if reagent kits might
actually be the cheaper option.

~~~
Thriptic
While its true that someone needs to do the things which you mentioned, basic
protein expression and purification are standard skills learned at the
undergrad level for biochem / molecular bio majors. Depending on the
composition of the plasmids, it should be very straight forward, and
presumably the manufacturer will also provide plasmid-specific protocols to
help. An existing lab tech / lab member / the investigator themselves could
quickly pick up this work, or a tech could be had for a lot less than 60 grand
a year.

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kayhi
Our start up has been tackling this space of over priced chemicals and
supplies for the past four years. We've worked with the majority of the DIYBio
labs in the USA.

We've taken the approach of working with small manufacturers that already make
products that are repackaged and marked up more than 10x.

John (author) is right that there is a huge need for more affordable reagents
especially recombinant protein.

~~~
pcrh
This seems to be an area for disruptive approaches. I think one of the
problems is for labs to find the cheaper suppliers who produce quality
reagents. Most times such suppliers will be producing only a few reagents and
so can't afford to have the markets presence of someone like VWR, Fisher or
Sigma.

Perhaps an ebay-like marketplace with user feedback would be the way to go?

~~~
kayhi
You're on the right track!

We've actually had extremely few issues with quality (much less than 1%). I've
personally used many of our manufacturers in research myself, which helped at
the start.

There are start ups collecting user feedback on supplies and we used to have
products reviews, but we've run into issues from large competitors making up
fictitious reviews (reviews of products we've never sold, etc.)

Right, many manufacturers can only produce 5-10 items at scale and do not have
the sales force for any market presence. We are helping them by aggregating
their products (currently at 45,000+) to compete with VWR, Fisher and Sigma.

The sad part (why this area needs help) is there is significant savings
ordering through us on the exact same item such as:

Greiner CELLSTAR® serological pipette, 10 mL $27 v. $106.60

[http://store.p212121.com/serological-
pipettes/](http://store.p212121.com/serological-pipettes/)
[http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/p7615?lang...](http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/p7615?lang=en&region=US)

Part of the reason that these pricing issues exist is that many universities
negotiate from list price instead of absolute price.

For example, give us 40% off of list price instead of asking how much does
this actually cost. Fisher will then have insanely high list prices and
accounting thinks it is a win while researchers get burned. Researchers can go
around purchasing, but often this requires additional paperwork.

Here is a section from a 48 university pool in Ohio, request for proposal
asking for percent off of list price (not actual price):
[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s32/sh/cada2b94-2214-44e9-8d8...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s32/sh/cada2b94-2214-44e9-8d8d-8897b72f29bf/8f56301f553b37e27bc1961eb8f8b812)

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refurb
Wow! That's pretty cool. The inability to order biological reagents as an
individual is a huge barrier to people doing this stuff on their own.

