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I have actually looked into how GMO silkworms are controlled per the Cartagena Protocol in Japan. Apparently, the restrictions aren't too over the top and fairly cheap and easy to implement.
Here are some recent images from a tour of Japan's Gunma Sericulture Technology Center, specifically where they store and work on their GMO silkworms: http://imgur.com/a/k4FxA
Basically, it just needs to be kept in an enclosed building with a wire mesh enclosure. When asked why such a seemingly lax enclosure, the supervisor there simply said that it was enough and they were not going to run or fly away.
Ann Arbor Firm Creates New, Stronger Spider Silk-based Fibers
By Adrienne Roberts
Published: Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Link Here
Ann Arbor-based Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc., a developer of spider silk-based fibers, has created four new lines of silkworms that provide high levels of durability and are designed for use in performance apparel and ballistic protection.
“These are the most complex genetic constructions that we have ever created in the company’s history,” says Jon Rice, COO of Kraig Biocraft Laboratories. “In some cases, these designs took more than 12 months to perfect and we are just now able to confirm that this work has resulted in successful transgenics (a genetic engineering process that removes genetic material from one species of an animal and adds it to a different species).”
Kraig Biocraft uses domesticated silkworms to produce genetically engineered spider silk. Rice says the silk produced by spiders is stronger and tougher than steel, and can be used for a wide range of military, industrial, and consumer applications.
Rice says the four new lines have the potential to rival its existing Dragon Silk line, the company’s strongest silkworm line.
“This work represents a significant breakthrough in our efforts to bring transformative technical fibers to market,” Rice says.
He says over the next several months, Kraig Biocraft will start testing each of the newly created transgenic lines to measure their performance and use for targeted application.
The USTAR update was based on a conversation between Al Gore and Neil deGrasse Tyson over a week ago.
The Spiber Article was pretty in depth and difficult to edit and put out in less than a day, especially by a larger well known company like Bloomberg.
The Bolt Threads PR was announced during the Tech Crunch Disrupt NY conference today that had been scheduled for a while now.
I think it is just a coincidence.
It looks like Bolt Threads has partnered with Patagonia and raised another $50 million and will be commercial next year (pushed back from this year). Spiber will be releasing their North Face Parka this year as well (though, at a loss) and potentially other textiles next year. It is pretty obvious now that these companies will commercialize before KBLB unless Kim can somehow pull a proverbial rabbit from his hat.
The investment interest in them at the tune of tens of millions of dollars shows that there is a huge demand for Spider Silk fabrics. Hopefully, the surge in interest after the release of these fabrics will bring more investors to KBLB assuming Kim has a noteable contract by then and Vietnam production resolves his quality issues. There is demand, Kim just needs to supply.
I am not really upset about this last PR. Sure, it did not have the info that i really wanted to know, but it still gave an insight to what is going on. We asked Kim to try to keep us in the loop and communicate more, so I don't think that we should be jumping all over him for putting out info, even if it is lacking in what we really want to know regarding commercialization or even fiber properties (though I am really curious about that).
Hopefully we will hear more about the set-up of the business and (ideally) some contracts providing upfront funding, but I don't want a silence on everything else in the meantime. I like all the info that I can get, even if it is nothing that will help the PPS.
That's good news. Hopefully they can ramp up this new "Über Silk" quickly in Vietnam. Hopefully they have made progress setting up there.
BTW, I did not receive an e-mail regarding this PR. Did anyone else?
Ah, i must have missed that, thanks. I wonder who they are for...
here is what it states in the filings. i don't know why they have two offices...
At the very top of the board on the right side, you can click "Hide Intro" and it will remain hidden anytime you are logged in.
You are right. I find more KBLB related information in the comments of articles on non-KBLB spider silk companies than I find the opposite.
In fact, I can't help but feel like the new article that bashes KBLB was written specifically due to a comment on the Bolt Thread article made by a "Jack Silk" on a KBLB PR. The reply to the comment by the author links directly to the new article.
I have always felt that these comments, likely made by shareholders, are more harmful than helpful, at least until KBLB reaches actual production.
I expect the 10-K to be released after market close tomorrow. That would be consistent with the time and date it was released last year Per the KBLB website. Have you heard that it will be released later than that?
Since it would only cover up to the end of December, I don't expect to see anything surprising, probably only mentioning the agreement with Vietnam being signed and development of Dragon Silk.
Hiring Jon was one of the best decisions that Kim has made, IMO. I also wasn't sure about him at first, but my conversation with his former coworker (Post 87919) and what I have heard about since then has made me confident that Jon will be the driving force that gets this company out of the pennies.
The fact that he left his secure job at Ultra Electronics AMI to come work at KBLB and is still continuing to work there I believe speaks volumes about the company and its potential.
I agree that there are a lot of forward looking statements, but I am still optimistic about all spider silk technology and believe that Spiber, Bolt Treads, and KBLB will be first of potentially many companies of its kind to break into the textile market. It will be expensive at first as any new technology is. It all boils down to who can get in good with well known, popular companies. Spiber has the advantage there with The North Face, but if what I have been told by the Spiber representative is correct, there will be no shortage of demand regardless of the initial price (within reason).
I think that will probably happen, honestly. I believe that Kim will likely sign a couple contracts with apparel companies and maybe even release a limited run of a new style of shoe or shirt with the little bit of good quality silk that he can produce over this next year similar to Spiber's strategy. I also hope to see Warwick Mills release some tactical apparel that uses a good blend of Monster Silk and other fibers. Hopefully it will be enough to generate interest to get some cash upfront for guaranteed exclusive sale of fiber over a period of time. That is what I would aim for if I were in Kim's shoes.
Hi CK,
To my knowledge, they don't necessarily "own" any process other than the ones that they patented so far. They had leased the piggyBac transposon previously to create Monster Silk and gotten a license to use Zinc Finger transposons to create Big Red. Ben told me that he believed that Dragon Silk was made using a different method, so I assume it was CRISPR/Cas9 as it seems to be the most popular gene editing method currently. In addition, you don't necessarily need to have asexual reproduction in order guarantee passing along genetic traits. There is now something called the Gene Drive that uses the CRISPR system that basically forces traits to be passed down to every offspring. Check out this video for more details if you have a spare couple hours: https://vimeo.com/144647180
No present data, but there is a trend. It was only a few years ago that the only price point that we knew was $100k per kilogram. Spiber has stated that they will be a thousand times less ($100 per kilo) at commercialization and has on their website how much their costs to produce the proteins have reduced. Bolt Threads mentioned that they also will be at less than $100 per kilogram shortly after Spiber mentioned it. I just assume that the trend will continue.
Bolt Threads stated that their process is not very different than growing any other yeast and the spinning process is not to expensive anymore as well. Their transgenic yeast is "much more compatible with the secondary structure of mRNA, and handle translation of the repetitive genetic structure much more efficiently and accurately than E. coli, resulting in a higher yield of non-truncated silk protein extracts, and the potential for extracellular secretion of silk proteins, a feature not found with traditional *E. coli* chassis", so I think that they will probably end up with the cheapest product to produce assuming it drops to become cheaper than silkworms. I am still curious about the properties that they have achieved and wonder if they could rival Dragon Silk. If so, they will be a real contender once fully established.
I hope so. I would be pleasantly surprised to see some sort of partnership with a large apparel company similar to what we have with Warwick Mills with a minor, low interest loan to KBLB in order to ensure that production proceeds smoothly.
Hi CK,
I agree that Kim has likely been breeding his silkworms so far, but it would still take several generations to breed enough to supply a major apparel company enough for a product line. That combined with the cross breeding, tossing out the worms that either do not have the colored eyes (genetic marker for spider silk genes) or are not of commercial size leaving only about half of the offspring viable, and repeat this process a couple more times to ensure there is enough genetic variability and you have enough to start scaling up. The only downside to that is the two month life-cycle of the silkworm that you need to wait for each generation. That is the time consuming part as I am sure you are aware of.
I do agree that Kim should, at some point, look into other platforms to create spider silk proteins. The cost to produce transgenic bacteria and yeast might be high currently, but it will drop as the technology improves and likely eventually surpass the transgenic silkworm as the cheaper method. Kim stated in the conference call that he is open to other methods, but going that route takes a lot more starting funds and skilled workers, so it is probably not the best thing to pursue until KBLB becomes profitable.
I hope so. An actual sales agreement might be the thing to get the stock off the ground, but KBLB will need to be in production for that. That is why I was hoping for some partnership or the like when this CSC agreement does expire. The current pps is so undervalued when compared to Spiber, so the potential is much greater imo.
I think that crossbreeding will be part of the "scale" in the "scale and sale". They crossbred Monster Silk silkworms as announced in the May 31, 2011 PR with commercial silkworms in order to have silkworms that are larger and will produce more silk. It makes sense that they would need to do the same thing with the Dragon Silk silkworms.
Though, i suppose, it is possible that they simply started with commercial silkworms when creating Dragon Silk, so if that were the case, it may not be necessary.
I believe that you are looking at an old revision of the S-1
The S-1/A released on Jan 30, 2015 states:
I hope you are right, though setting up the subsidiary isn't the really time consuming task.
With Dragon Silk, I am pretty sure that crossbreeding will be necessary, but since MS should be ready to go, hopefully all that would be needed would be a ramping up of production of already frozen eggs. I don't know the details of it and am basing everything on KBLB's previous timelines with MS regarding how long it will take to crossbreed and ramp up to production. Hopefully, Kim has learned some stuff from the first go around and it will take less time now.
I agree, but the line above it that reads "This prospectus relates to the resale of up to 110,000,000 shares of the common stock of Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc." is the issue since 7.3 million over 110 million shares would be 6.8 cents per share and we have not quite been to that point. Assuming an average price of 2.5 cents per share sold, it would come out to only 2.75 million. That is still enough to satisfy the $100k per month that Kim has been issuing so far, but he can issue up to $200k and will likely need to in order to pay the additional costs for setting up in Vietnam.
Either way, even if his spending continues at the current pace, the agreement stretches until the middle of next year and I don't think KBLB will be selling enough silk (if any) at that point. He will still need to find additional financing which was my point.
I believe that it will be sometime late 2017 to early 2018 before we are producing anything around enough sIlk at the pilot facility to support supplying orders. I base this on a number of rough timelines and, unfortunately, the lifecycle of a silkworm is probably the major limiting factor for this.
As es1 pointed out in his post #104109, it took Apple 70 days to create their subsidiary. After that, it will take about 10 days to go through the entire import process which I mentioned in my post #103284. Then comes the crossbreeding. According to the Monster Silk timeline, KBLB successfully created transgenic silkworms in September 2010 and had them crossbred by May 2011, so that is about 8 months or about 3-4 silkworm lifecycles. Then, the “ramping up” of Monster Silk lasted from October 2013 until July 2014 when they mentioned their quality control issues and implementing a new protocol. Assuming that they would have been hit metric tons around that time, it would have been about 9 months or another 4 silkworm cycles. Added together, the timeline is around 19-20 months from the Vietnam agreement until sales which puts it right at the end of 2017 barring no unforeseen issues or delays.
During these next couple years, costs will increase since Kim will have to pay local workers to train and work with the silkworms as well as the costs of the lease which likely means more dilution. Since KBLB is nearing the end of the current finance agreement, Kim is going to need to secure additional funds some other way. I am hoping that he will partner up with another company similar to the way that Spiber has partnered with Kojima Industries to acquire funding or get additional funding through grants or loans rather than dilutive financing. I don’t see the pps recovering if they continue to dilute as they have been the last couple years. A product released through Warwick Mills might cause a quick spike, but it will likely continue its downward trend and alleged manipulation unless some other means of financing is pursued.
Overall, I am still confident that KBLB will succeed and make a lot of money, but just not on the timeline that I was initially anticipating when I invested here. Spiber will beat KBLB to the market with their Moon Parka and has already made initial sales of their proteins to support this. Bolt Threads is also supposedly on the verge releasing their own products this year. KBLB will likely be third to market, but if their silk cost to produce is as cheap as it costs to make normal silk, that will be the big advantage. Spiber and Bolt Threads are touting the $100 per kilogram price point, but the cost to produce silk is around a quarter of that. Additionally, the 2GPa strength property of Dragon Silk will really be appealing to textile manufacturers and I don’t think that Spiber or Bolt Threads can match that (yet). Either way, there is a huge market out there and many applications for this silk. With only 3 startup companies entering within a couple years of each other, they all have the potential to become huge.
True, but Spiber also has a lot of established infrastructure already in place and have been making initial sales as of last year, though are not profitable yet.
The only advantages KBLB has over Spiber currently is the value of the company and price of the finished product. Spiber is currently worth ten times more than KBLB is, so KBLB has a larger potential for growth in my eyes. In addition, silkworm silk is generally much cheaper to produce and sell than Spiber's proteins, though i think that their production methods will become much more cheaper over time.
I don't know for MS, but I always expected that crossbreeding would eventually be required for DS simply because of what was stated in an old PR dated May 31, 2011:
Spiber is a private company, so it is hard to find too much on them, but I have been keeping notes on them as best I can, so here is a basic rundown of what I got:
Spiber Inc.
CEO: Kazuhide Sekiyama
Location: Tsuruoka, Yamagata, Japan
Production Method: Transgenic Bacteria creates proteins which can be processed into threads
Website: https://www.spiber.jp/en/
Subsidiaries: Xpiber Inc.
Notes: Founded in September 2007. They have raised ¥14.64332 billion (~$130 million USD) from various investors and government grants. They have two pilot factories built on the same site, one producing 100kg of proteins a month and the other producing 20 tons of proteins a year (~1.7 tons a month) at peak production rate. They are working in partnership with Kojima Industries Corporation, an automobile part manufacturer, as well as Goldwin Inc., the Japanese distributer for their branch of The North Face.
Their first proof of concept textile was the blue QMONOS dress (http://imgur.com/a/qqmpi#0) and more recently created the Moon Parka in partnership with The North Face Japan (http://imgur.com/a/gzI75). They are not allowing anyone in the general public to touch their prototypes at this time, but they do plan on releasing a limited run of Moon Parkas this year for a price that rivals the already existing Antarctica Parka (http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/crouka-lr/item/thenor-nd91501/?s-id=borderless_recommend_item_en). They have stated that their goal at commercialization it to offer their proteins at a price less than $100 per kilogram. They plan on starting to work with additional companies in 2017 and hope to be at full scale commercialization by 2025.
They are keeping the properties of their fibers a secret currently and are supposedly improving them constantly, but in a public presentation they did in late 2014 to secure funding from the Japanese Government (http://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/sentan/kakushintekikenkyu/7kai/purezen4.pdf), they cited 1.6 GPa strength and 354 MJ/m^3 toughness for their fibers.
My e-mail was in my spam folder. I didn't even notice that this PR occurred until I checked the board just now. It is some good news that has been a long time coming.
Assuming everything goes well, we should see a 2017 initial sales date.
I was referring to the SEC filings, not the newsletter.
Speaking of quarterly reports, it has been more that 3 months since the last KBLB quarterly. I wonder what is causing the delay in release. Maybe it has something to do with the "administrative delay"?
Just speculation, but maybe they are moving the silkworms through quarantine.
Per their quarantine procedure, KBLB needs to provide a number of documents including "1) a Registration Form as regulated, 2) Business license (or notarized copy), 3) other related documentation as regulated." I bet there would be plenty of extra documentation considering that it is GMO silkworms that are being imported. That would explain the "clerical delay" if this were the case.
Also, "Depending on the animal species and animal diseases, the quarantine period should not exceed 45 days for live animals and the time to isolate animal products for quarantine should not be more than 10 days." Hopefully this is the case and it will not be much longer, but it still needs to go through an examination in accordance with their Animal Health Law.
As I said, it is merely speculation. I would have PR'd something like this if it were in process, but I am not Kim.
I have been keeping an eye on Entogenetics and noticed that their patent was approved a couple months back which had been mentioned by other people that have posted here.
I know they have been growing their Mulberry Trees over at ReVenture Park to start expanding their sericulture facility. Since they started growing them back in 2014, i assume that they will be at a good height in 2017, so I expect them to start entering commercial production then and enter the market maybe in 2018. Also, they are making their silk all in the USA, so they will be paying a premium on labor compared to any Vietnam run sericulture facility.
Based on what I read previously in their patent, their fibers are of good quality with better properties than Monster Silk, but not nearly as good as Dragon Silk's strength. I think that they wont have any issues filling the demand for their fibers when they do start commercializing, but they will not be first to market and I don't think they will beat KBLB to market assuming Vietnam green-lights Kim by the middle of this year.
If, for some reason, there is an issue with KBLB's patent not being approved due to it infringing on Entogenetics' patent, it should not affect the Dragon Silk line which I think will be the superior fiber on the market when it is released, anyway. Regardless, I expect that to be their main silk line when they do reach commercial production and the real moneymaker initially.
It is a twisted thread of many fibers and looks well made imo.
Here are some better pictures of it: http://imgur.com/a/gzI75
Thats pretty accurate. I have been told by someone that has some inside knowledge about this that they are effectively the same entities and that it is simply a collaboration for funding.
Thank you!
I posted them a while back. I just got around to adding headers to the pics and making them publicly accessible on imgur without a direct link.
The North Face exhibit in Sendai
Pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/gzI75
I am in Japan again and decided to take a short trip over to Sendai to check out that Moon Parka. Here is what i learned:
- They hope to market the Moon Parka in 2016 in limited quantites at a similar price to the Antarctica Parka which costs 77,760 yen or around $650 USD.
- They expect to be much less than the $100 per kilogram to manufacture the spider silk proteins that they mention on their website by the time they commercialize.
- They see Bolt Threads Inc. as potentially their biggest rival in the Spider Silk business. They were aware of KBLB, but did not comment about them.
- They would not let me touch the jacket itself, but they do plan on producing samples that people can touch in the next year or so.
I thought you guys will find this info interesting.
Merry Christmas!
A quick Facebook "people" search gets a new result, but there is not much info on the guy and I don't know how true that info is. It did seem to show up around the same time as the newsletter that mentioned the guy, so it is quite a coincidence if it is not him.
Here's a curious article.
A company working closely with Utah State University's Synthetic Bioproducts Center called Technology Holding LLC was recently awarded a $1 million dollar DOD contract to manufacture Spider Silk (article here).
The owner and executive director of the company is Radha Joshi, but he is not quoted in the article. The people who are quoted are people working in the Utah State University's Synthetic Bioproducts Center, notably Randy Lewis.
The Technology Holding LLC's website does not state that Araknitek Inc. is a partner. Has Randy Lewis given up on that company or is there something else going on?
If you are interested in how the CRISPR/Cas9 system can be used to "cheat" Mendelian inheritance and achieve and maintain homozygotecy over just a few generations, check out the Gene Drive.
If you have about 2 hours of free time, there is a lecture that you can watch on it at https://vimeo.com/144647180 that covers how the CRISPR/Cas9 and the Gene Drive works. It does go into a bit of technical detail at times that goes over my head, but the parts that they do cover that I could understand as well as the bioethical issues faced with when using this kind of technology was extremely interesting. I reccomended giving it a watch to better understand the direction and gene transfer methods that KBLB will likely be in the future or may be using now.