I have read the press release but have mixed feelings about it.
First the US production. This is insane. GMO regulation in the US is still prohibitive, getting a single GM-silkworm approved will take 100+ million USD and 10+ years. Talking about US production means sometime in the mid-2030's. This is useless and pretty much scary. They spent a decade finding a country where the government will allow them to rear GM-silkworms and then start a multi-decade long journey again to go back to the US? Not mentioning that apparently in Vietnam they can switch to new silkworm strains without additional approval, while in the US they would need to re-approve every single new strain, taking decades.
This is just simply stupid, and means that commercialisation of this technology (=revenue) will not happen in the foreseeable future.
The other main point is much more interesting. Apparently they can produce pure spider silk now in silk moths. Which is fine and all, but this particular application works only with proteins that can be woven into a thread. This can be a huge advantage if they can produce the silk proteins they promised, this can be a tremendous achievement.
However they never talk about the company's greatest asset, it looks like they are not aware they possess it at all. Apparently they have some kind of umbrella approval to produce whatever strain of GM-silk moth they want in Vietnam. This is something a ot of big companies desire, but none other have. Why do they not try some molecular pharming? Producing recombinant proteins is a huge business, just inserting a gene into the silk worm genome to produce any protein in the fat body would be a no-brainer cash grab. Easy to do, fast to accomplish and could generate revenue immediately. Why does the company not do this? They would only need to partner with other companies and produce antibodies, enzymes, whatever they need. this way they could outgrow the silk market without effort.
TL, DR: The US production is bad news, the pure silk is fantastic and some huge opportunities are missed by this company.
