Wizardry meets science: Harry Potter alum invests in cell-free biomanufacturing startup

In London, a startup working to produce polyester precursors from renewable materials has raised  £12.5 million ($17.3 million) in an investment round that included actress Emma Watson and Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. 

FabricNano uses cell-free biomanufacturing, which involves coaxing enzymes and proteins to produce chemicals on a DNA wafer. This method avoids many of the pitfalls of fermentation-based production of biobased chemicals, where finicky organisms need to be kept alive, yields are often low, and separations can be expensive. “Why is Coke not shifting to bio-based plastics? Because it’s too expensive and the market is too price sensitive,” Grant Aarons, FabricNano’s cofounder and CEO, tells Fortune. The company plans on using the funding to evaluate the scaling potential of the DNA wafers and advance its first product, 1,3-propanediol. 

 “1,3-propanediol is a well-established chemical product, but it is expensive and, basically, it is too slow to biomanufacture,” says John Woodley, a chemical engineering professor at the Technical University of Denmark who serves as a scientific adviser to FabricNano. “There is an opportunity to drive this much faster and bring the price down.”

FabricNano approached Watson, who played Harry Potter heroine Hermione Granger, on the advice of seed investors Atomico and Tania Boler.