How Analog/Mixed-Mode ICs Support Biomedical Platforms

Analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits are beginning to complement applied biology to help create platforms that seek breakthroughs in human health through data-driven solutions. These semiconductor-based biomedical endeavors are addressing the digitization of the biological world and the creation of new fields such as synthetic biology.

Below are two design case studies that demonstrate how analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits are enabling biomedical companies to enter a new era of life science innovation.

A completely digitalized biological world

Flagship Pioneering, a bioplatform company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced a strategic partnership with Analog Devices Inc. to accelerate the development of solutions for preventive and therapeutic medicine and regenerative agriculture.

The two companies aim to accelerate the development of a fully digital biological world, encompassing next-generation protein sequencing, multi-omics, early disease diagnosis, transforming rich biological information into actionable digital data, drug design and optimization, and much more.

Figure 1 Flagship Pioneering Founder and CEO Noubar Afeyan (right) joined ADI CEO and Chairman Vincent Roche at the technology conference to discuss how a fully digitized biological world can leverage advances in the life sciences. Source: ADI

Completely digital biological products will combine ADI’s semiconductor technologies, signal processing portfolio and physical world domain with Flagship Pioneering’s applied biology expertise to support biological discoveries, new and improved measurements, diagnostics and novel interventions.

Additionally, ADI’s expertise in sensor technologies and microfabrication, as well as healthcare automation across diagnostic, imaging and therapeutic devices, will complement the Flagship Pioneering efforts to scale novel technologies and biological insights that have led to new types of therapeutic modalities, such as mRNA, tRNA and epigenetic controllers.

Both companies aim to invent and create new bioplatforms that combine biology and technology. Their early efforts will focus on bioelectronic platforms, regenerative agriculture, new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and preventive healthcare and medicine.

Gene synthesis platform

ADI has also partnered with Evonetix, a Cambridge, England-based company that develops semiconductors to improve access to gene synthesis with a solution it calls gene-foundry-on-a-chip. Evonetix has signed a joint development and commercial supply agreement with ADI to enhance its semiconductor-based gene synthesis solutions.

Figure 2 The interface between silicon and biology is critical for developing therapies to help treat disease. Source: ADI

Current approaches to gene synthesis can be slow, expensive and inaccurate. As a result, centralized DNA manufacturing services struggle to rapidly deliver length, accuracy and complexity. The Evonetix gene synthesis platform aims to facilitate a new approach that will unlock the potential of new biological therapies and drive advances in biological engineering faster and further.

The company expects to be able to prepare a gene’s worth of DNA in three days in the lab, which would shorten the cycle for designing, creating and testing antibodies, vaccines and proteins from months to days, and enable up to a tenfold increase in gene delivery efficiency.

Here, ADI’s integrated circuits, designed to thermally control DNA synthesis and assembly, can take Evonetix’s Evaleo series of DNA synthesis devices to the next level with a turnkey semiconductor solution.

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