Profile

Elegen brings unique insights and technical innovation to create high-quality synthetic DNA faster, catalyzing the next revolution in the life sciences. The company is led by seasoned leaders with decades of experience in developing novel and scalable approaches in molecular biology, chemistry, and microfluidics. Elegen uses a proprietary microfluidics approach to build longer, higher-quality DNA on a faster timeline for agricultural, chemical, healthcare, and pharma industries. Founded in 2017, Elegen is privately held and based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit elegenbio.com.

Key Products

ENFINIA™ DNA

Elegen’s next-generation, cell-free gene synthesis provides high-complexity, NGS-verified, long synthetic DNA fast, no cloning required and ready for immediate input into workflows, saving time, allowing exploration of a broader sequence space, and enabling simpler scaleup sans bacterial debris.

Customer Insights

“When working on time-sensitive grant proposals in the future, we will call on Elegen to deliver what we need.” – Elan Eisenmesser, PhD, The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

“We did not need to modify the material beyond hydrating it—we used the product as is.” – Stephen Von Stetina, Asimov

“Elegen material comes at a much higher yield than other vendors, but because we estimate that 95% of our cloning works the first time, we end up not using much material at all! This differs from the past, where we had low-yield products that needed multiple tries in cloning, and sometimes we even had to re-order more product to finish cloning.” – Stephen Von Stetina, Asimov

“We have full confidence in the products we receive from Elegen. I believe only one sequence out of hundreds has failed to be delivered. We determined that nearly 40% of all sequences Elegen delivered were identified by other vendors as unmakeable as a single fragment, giving us access to DNA we could not otherwise obtain and enabling us to take on more projects with higher confidence.” – Stephen Von Stetina, Asimov

Key Executives

Matthew Hill, PhD, Founder and CEO

Matt Hill, Ph.D., is founder and CEO of Elegen Corp., a privately-held company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, committed to revolutionizing genetic medicine and synthetic biology workflows with an innovative cell-free DNA manufacturing technology. Armed with a vision to eliminate the DNA bottleneck at the core of all synthetic biology applications, Hill founded Elegen in 2017 to innovate the DNA build process. Under his direction, the company launched ENFINIA™ DNA in 2023 with industry-leading length, complexity, accuracy, and speed to accelerate discovery for healthcare and pharma as well as agbio and synbio industries. Hill previously served as VP of R&D at Natera, where he co-invented their core technology and led the commercialization of five precision molecular diagnostics products, enabling their successful 2015 IPO. An accomplished scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur with a Ph.D. from Stanford, he is driven to create lasting positive impacts on the world.

Marc Unger, PhD, CSO

Marc A. Unger received his PhD in Physical Chemistry at Caltech. During a postdoc in Applied Physics in Professor Steve Quake’s lab, he invented Multilayer Soft Lithography, the foundational technology of Fluidigm Corporation. The first paper describing the technology was published in Science and has now been cited more than 4,000 times. He joined Fluidigm and drove the development of the core technology, manufacturing, and product lines; he served as VP R&D and Chief Scientific Officer. He also restructured and rebuilt the Marketing organization as EVP R&D and Marketing. During his tenure the company went public and achieved product revenues greater than $100M per year.

Dan La Caze, CBO

Dan has over 16 years’ experience in corporate and business development roles at life science and molecular diagnostics companies, including Sequenom, Genoptix (Novartis), Natera and Berkeley Lights. He has led over 100 strategic transactions on both the buy- and sell-side and has developed successful corporate strategies for small- and medium-sized biotechnology companies with disruptive technologies. He has a BS and MS in Biology from UCSD and an MBA from London Business School.

Investors

• Triatomic Capital


• GSK


• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Bio + Health)


• KdT Ventures


• 8VC


• Digitalis Ventures


• ACVC Partners


• Alix Ventures


• AME Cloud Ventures


• Agilent Technologies

Competitors

• Twist


• IDT


• Azenta


• Genscript


• ThermoFisher


• Ribbon Biolabs


• Telesis


• Ansa

News and Press Releases

• May 2024: Elegen announced a $35M Series B funding (Read).

Corporate Responsibility

Elegen is a member of the International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC), whose members screen synthetic gene orders against the IGSC’s comprehensive Regulated Pathogen Database to identify regulated pathogen/toxin sequences and other potentially dangerous sequences. Members responsibly ensure the benefits of gene synthesis technology while minimizing biosecurity risks.