Twist Bioscience Corporation supplies laboratories with an essential raw material: DNA sequences manufactured to order. This American biotechnology company does not primarily develop drugs under its own brand; it markets tools that enable its customers to design experiments, study genomes or explore new therapeutic molecules. It positions itself as a technology supplier at the intersection of chemistry, automation and digital biology.
A company born of miniaturization
Twist Bioscience was founded in 2013 by Emily Leproust, Bill Peck and Bill Bany. With a background in DNA synthesis chemistry, Emily Leproust champions an industrial approach: reducing reaction volumes and increasing the number of operations performed simultaneously. The company has therefore developed a platform that uses silicon substrates to produce many DNA fragments in parallel, rather than relying exclusively on traditional laboratory formats.
This architecture aims to reduce reagent consumption and increase production capacity. Listed on Nasdaq in 2018 under the ticker symbol TWST, the company is part of the growth of synthetic biology, where the ability to order genetic sequences facilitates the transition from computer-based design to experimental testing.
From custom sequences to genomic analysis tools
The catalogue includes synthetic genes and mixtures of oligonucleotides, short fragments of DNA. These products are used to build variants, modify biological systems or test numerous hypotheses in parallel. Users include academic teams, pharmaceutical companies and industrial biotechnology businesses. The quality of the sequences delivered, turnaround times and reproducibility are key selection criteria.
Twist is also involved in sample preparation for next-generation sequencing. Its capture probes enable the enrichment of genomic regions selected for analysis. They thus help laboratories focus their sequencing reads on relevant portions of the genome, for research applications and, depending on the products and conditions of use, clinical analyses.
DNA synthesis also makes it possible to create variant libraries useful for antibody discovery and protein engineering. Twist therefore operates upstream of many development pipelines: its tools support researchers’ work without, on their own, guaranteeing the biological or clinical success of projects.
What next?
The challenge is to turn expanding applications into an industrially efficient and economically sustainable business. This requires controlling costs, ensuring reliable deliveries and sustaining technological development efforts. DNA data storage represents a longer-term avenue for diversification, whose adoption still depends heavily on the costs of writing and reading data. Finally, the growing accessibility of synthetic DNA reinforces the importance of order screening and biosafety practices: an imperative for suppliers of this biological infrastructure.