INSEMPRA
Insempra, a biology-powered company enabling businesses to make superior products in partnership with nature, today announces a strategic investment in Solena Materials Ltd (‘Solena’), a synthetic biology company. Solena, a spin-out from Imperial College London, develops synthetic proteins for high-performance clothing fibers.
The investment will allow Insempra, formerly Origin.Bio, to accelerate its strategy of harnessing new technologies to advance biological production processes, creating naturally superior products to drive the regenerative revolution. Solena will be a major part of Insempra’s platform to deliver high-performance, intrinsically sustainable ingredients for a broad array of industries.
Solena is using computational design to develop new classes of synthetic proteins to produce high-performance clothing fibers, which can absorb large amounts of kinetic energy. Insempra will accelerate the development and production of these synthetic proteins on an industrial scale, offering better, biobased solutions to the petrochemically sourced, non-biodegradable materials or fibers extracted from nature or animals, such as silk, currently used in the textile and clothing industries. This technology also reduces other environmental impacts such as the rise of microplastics in water bodies coming from washing petrochemically-sourced textiles.
Jens Klein, founder and CEO of Insempra and CEO of Solena Materials, commented: “We are hugely excited by this investment in Solena, which will help to accelerate our market-first approach to develop superior, intrinsically sustainable ingredients. We look forward to fast-tracking Solena’s development and production of their unique synthetic proteins to develop customized, high-performance fibers for a variety of applications.”
Dr James MacDonald, inventor, co-founder and CTO of Solena Materials, added: “The team and I are very excited to make this technology a huge success.”
Professor Paul Freemont of Imperial College London, added: “This investment from Insempra recognizes the potential of our technology to revolutionize high-performance fabrics, and their supply chains. Together, we can harness our synthetic biology capabilities to develop, produce and manufacture a new class of superior, more sustainable fiber technology.”
Insempra, a co-founder of Solena, will be the sole contributing shareholder in Solena, which is based at Imperial College’s Translation & Innovation Hub (I-HUB) in White City, London. Solena’s Board will be comprised of Dr James MacDonald of Solena, Professor Paul Freemont and Professor Milo Shaffer of Imperial College London, and Jens Klein and Andreas Heyl of Insempra.
About Insempra
Insempra is a biology-powered company enabling businesses to make superior products with nature. We combine bioscience and technology to grow matter for new and better products.
For too long, businesses have relied on chemical industrialization processes and petrochemicals, depleting our planet’s limited resources. That’s why we are committed to drive the regenerative revolution to manufacture at scale in collaboration with nature.
Led by a hand-picked team of biologists, technologists and entrepreneurs with rebel hearts, Insempra is here to create a new school of thought and collective action. The time to restore the balance between people and the planet is now. We don't wait for change. We do what needs to be done to grow a better future.
Learn more about Insempra at insempra.bio
About Solena Materials
Solena is a protein materials design company. We use world-leading computational design, machine learning, and automation to accelerate the development of bespoke materials targeted at multiple sectors, from fashion apparel to medical textiles. Our new protein-based fibers will replace materials extracted from nature such as silk and petrochemically-derived materials, to create a new world of biodegradable, functional and sustainable smart materials for consumers, industry, and the planet.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220725005756/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Suzano Forms Partnership with Tencent and Ecofuturo Institute at COP30 for AI-Powered Conservation and Nature Education20.11.2025 18:25:00 CET | Press release
New agreement signed at COP30 will see organisations collaborating to use artificial intelligence tools for biodiversity monitoring and digital platforms to boost public engagement in conservation efforts. The world’s largest pulp supplier, Suzano, today announces the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the multinational technology business Tencent and the Brazilian non-profit Ecofuturo Institute, to pioneer new digital approaches to drive public engagement in conservation. The collaboration will leverage Suzano’s expertise in sustainable forestry, Tencent’s cutting-edge digital technology, and Ecofuturo’s expertise in environmental education, to pilot joint initiatives in both Brazil and China. These include enhancing ecological awareness, accelerating biodiversity solutions, and leveraging digital platforms to foster public engagement in conservation. The partnership will result in a pilot project where advanced AI tools for species recognition developed by Tencent’s
EMVCo Working on How Global Specifications Can Support Agentic Payments20.11.2025 17:38:00 CET | Press release
EMVCo – the technical body that creates and manages EMV® Specifications and programmes that enable seamless and secure card-based payments worldwide – has announced that it is working on how global specifications can support innovation in agentic payment solutions by increasing trust and interoperability across the ecosystem. Agentic commerce is rapidly reshaping the shopping experience by enabling AI agents to act on the consumer’s behalf. This is driving significant momentum for agentic payments, which introduce AI agents as new actors that can initiate transactions with merchants – without requiring direct involvement from the consumer. While agentic payments have the potential to increase convenience and personalisation, they present unique considerations for how transactions are initiated, authenticated and secured. As industry adoption and innovation accelerate, a globally interoperable and scalable approach may be beneficial in realising trusted agentic payments for consumers, m
Université Paris-Saclay and Owkin: A Unique Alliance to Propel University Medical Research to the Top of the European Rankings Through AI20.11.2025 15:17:00 CET | Press release
Université Paris-Saclay and Owkin announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding to explore the potential of K Pro Free - Owkin’s AI co-pilot for biology - for use by Paris-Saclay. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251120130113/en/ K Pro Free will now be available to the entire Université Paris-Saclay community, and in particular teachers, researchers and doctoral students working in the biomedical sciences. The partnership includes workshops, training sessions and events designed to promote the discovery and adoption of K Pro Free, as well as the co-organization of communication and dissemination initiatives around the use of AI in health. In this way, the partnership will promote user training, but also enrich and continuously improve the co-pilot's models through feedback and use cases from the l’Université Paris-Saclay community. This partnership is part of Université Paris-Saclay’s strategy to integr
Frasca Advances Flight Training Technology with New Visual System Powered by Unreal Engine20.11.2025 15:05:00 CET | Press release
Frasca International, Inc., a FlightSafety International company and leader in flight simulation, today announced the launch of VITAL FVS 100, the next evolution of its visual system technology. Building on the proven TruVision Global platform, VITAL FVS 100 was developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and delivers unprecedented realism, scalability, and innovation in pilot training. The Unreal-powered VITAL FVS 100 system introduces major advancements in visual fidelity and training realism, further enhancing the capabilities of Frasca, a leading developer of flight simulators and training devices. The new system includes physically based renderings, advanced lighting effects, and a new volumetric cloud model that creates dynamic, weather-rich environments. Terrain imagery now includes one-meter resolution coverage for the contiguous United States and Hawaii, with expanded global datasets covering European buildings and tree covered regions. Additionally, enhanced particle effects re
GigaOm Radar for Vector Databases v3 Positions Vespa.ai as a Leader and Outperformer20.11.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press release
Vespa Recognized for Integrated Ranking, Multimodal Search, and Production-Scale AI Performance Vespa.ai, the creator of the AI Search Platform for building and deploying large-scale, real-time AI applications powered by big data, today announced its recognition as a Leader and Outperformer in the GigaOm Radar for Vector Databases v3, marking the company’s third consecutive year being evaluated in GigaOm’s vector database research. Now in its third edition, the report compares 17 leading open source and commercial solutions using GigaOm’s structured evaluation framework. In addition to core table-stakes capabilities, the Radar reviews each vendor’s key features, emerging strengths, and broader business criteria. The shift from Sonar to Radar reflects the technology’s transition into mainstream adoption. GigaOm names Vespa.ai a leader for its ability to manage complex data, optimize results at scale, and support multimodal AI workloads. The report highlights Vespa’s native tensor suppor
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom