Colossal Biosciences, considered the world’s first de-extinction company, recently unveiled its nonprofit organization, the Colossal Foundation, to leverage its advancements in technologies like genetic sequencing, gene editing, and assisted reproduction for critical worldwide collaborative conservation efforts.
“We started the Colossal Foundation to ensure that we are delivering our technology solutions into the hands of those who can benefit the most,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal Biosciences CEO and co-founder. “The Colossal Foundation further expands our capacity to get our technologies into the world as fast as possible and brings new, much-needed funding to conservation while empowering the modernization of the tools.
“We envision a future where conservation efforts are proactive, innovative, and impactful because of the application of these emerging technologies.”
Launching with a key programmatic focus on “saving today’s at-risk species”, the foundation will expand upon Colossal Biosciences’ work with the Sumatran rhinoceros and the northern white rhino, two of the world’s most endangered species, with a population of around 40 and two, respectively. As charismatic megafauna, the attention and relevance these species bring to the conservation movement cannot be understated, making their protection of the utmost importance.
Today, both species are guarded 24/7 by armed patrolling units. While conservation efforts emphasize protections from poaching — which is still a significant problem, particularly on the island of Sumatra — the use of advanced technology has become increasingly necessary as both species continue to face unprecedented threats, including the lack of mate compatibility, especially a concern for the mother-daughter pair of northern white rhinos and Sumatran rhinos in the wild.
Seeking to center collaboration and technology at the forefront of the conservation movement, Colossal has developed comprehensive initiatives to bring these precious species back from the brink of extinction, grounded in the breakthroughs of its moon shot projects working to revive the woolly mammoth, dodo, and Tasmanian tiger.
“De-extinction is an engine of innovation that leads to tools that are directly applicable to conservation. Together, with some of the leading people in their fields, we will successfully be able to address and remedy specific conservation problems,” said Matt James, Colossal Biosciences’ chief animal officer and the Colossal Foundation’s executive director.
Saving the Sumatran Rhino
With decades of poaching relegating the species to isolated and fragmented subpopulations in the dense forests of Sumatra and Borneo, Indonesia, Sumatran rhinos often live their entire lives without encountering individuals outside of their small groups of two to five, struggling to find viable mates in the wild without risking inbreeding.
Uniquely threatened by infertility-causing diseases like uterine tumors and cysts if it fails to reproduce for an extended period, over half of the female Sumatran rhinos rescued for captive breeding programs suffer from infertility, and its birth rate is no longer high enough to replace individuals dying from natural causes.
With concerns for the species’ future, in March 2023, Colossal Biosciences hosted the first-ever Sumatran rhino convention, bringing together key stakeholders from the Indonesian government, IPB University, and Re:wild to develop a coordinated plan for utilizing assisted reproduction tools. Following the November 2023 announcement from the Indonesian government that two Sumatran rhinos had been born within two months, breeding programs have been given new life — literally.
“The Sumatran rhino breeding program has never been in a better position,” Nina Fascione, the International Rhino Foundation’s executive director, commented on the births. “Two years ago there was only one captive Sumatran rhino pair in the world able to successfully produce offspring. Now, there are three pairs — six rhinos — who are proven breeders. Those are much better odds for the long-term survival of this species.”
The Colossal Foundation is providing the Indonesian government with funding, guidance, and technological support to further bolster the country’s breeding program and is partnering with Bogor Agricultural University to ensure the local development of advanced assisted reproductive technologies, like in vitro fertilization, in congruence with the species’ needs.
The foundation is also leveraging its groundbreaking genetic sequencing toolkit to determine crucial biological information about the captive Sumatran rhinos, like their individual interrelatedness and health, that can inform viable breeding strategies.
“The advanced technology, training, and funding support that the Colossal Foundation is promising for the conservation of the Sumatran rhino is an important support to Indonesia’s efforts to save and recover this magnificent species,” said Dr. Muhammad Agil, team leader of assisted reproductive technology and biobank for endangered wildlife species at Institut Pertanian Bogor University. “In collaboration with global experts on the advanced assisted reproductive technology and biobank program for the species, IPB University is excited to work with Colossal for the transfer of skills and technology to Indonesia under our partnership agreement.”
Rescuing the Northern White Rhino
Down to a lonely mother-daughter pair named Najin and Fatu, the northern white rhino is the world’s rarest large mammal and is considered functionally extinct due to its inability to breed.
Since 2019, the BioRescue consortium has been working to innovate the conservation of the species through the development of assisted reproductive technology and related stem cell techniques, and has created 33 viable northern white rhino embryos using immature eggs from Fatu and preserved sperm of now-deceased males.
While the consortium has the tools to breed the species through in vitro fertilization of a surrogate southern white rhino — a closely related subspecies with a population that outnumbers all other rhino species combined — because the remaining northern white rhinos are descendants of decades of captive breeding participants, there are concerns that they lack the genetic diversity to sustain a population.
“If you want to introduce these individuals to the wild, they should have a wide variety of genes to fight against diseases, environmental factors, so they should not be in a breeding group. That should be a healthy genetic population, but it’s a quite holistic approach, which will take maybe decades to fulfill,” Dr. Thomas Hildebrandt, project head at BioRescue, head of the department of reproduction management of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, and member of the scientific advisory board of Colossal Biosciences, told PBS News.
Partnering with the BioRescue consortium, the Colossal Foundation is bringing the fundamentals of genetic rescue and the same gene editing techniques it uses in its de-extinction projects to confer a newfound genetic diversity into the living cells of the northern white rhino.
The Colossal Foundation plans to pinpoint any of the species’ missing advantageous genes by sequencing a global historical catalog of its skin, bones, and preserved tissue. It can then reintroduce these genes into the northern white rhino’s live cell line to produce genetically diverse embryos.
The foundation will also conduct a population study of the southern white rhino to identify key aspects of a healthy population. This ensures that if the species were to transition to the wild, it would be equipped with the natural behaviors necessary for survival.
“We’re very honored to be BioRescue’s genetic rescue partner and thus have the opportunity to help save the northern white rhino, as well as other iconic keystone species from the brink of extinction,” Lamm said.
“At Colossal, we’re passionate about species preservation and as part of our larger de-extinction work, we want to leverage our techniques and toolkit for conservation. We are creating tools that will allow us to heal what has been lost and restore ecosystems that will be sustainable for future generations.”
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