In early 2020, scientists at UT Austin were deep into building a unique facility on the Forty Acres, a turbo-charged, biotech playground with a focus on rapid scientific discovery. The biological foundry, as it was called, was part of a partnership in synthetic biology research between The University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. military. It just so happened that the foundry’s founding came along at the same time as the worst biological event in generations: COVID-19.
Fighting biological threats is a high priority of the U.S. military and one of four main focus areas for a new partnership with Army Research Laboratory South. When the pandemic began, there was no time to waste for UT Austin biological researchers. An initial goal was to identify, as quickly as possible, the antibodies in patients that could help wipe out a corona virus infection.
Collecting and analyzing blood…
