Emily LeProust

Emily Leproust is an American scientist and entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder ^[1] of Twist Bioscience, a public company working on DNA synthesis. The company harnesses synthetic biology, providing tools to manufacture insulin from yeast, to tackle malaria, ^[2] produce spider silk at scale ^[3] or store information on DNA. ^{[4] [5]} She was awarded the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award in 2020. ^[6]

Education and career

Leproust earned an M.Sc. in Industrial Chemistry from the Lyon School of Industrial Chemistry ^[7] in 1995 and a PhD in Organic Chemistry & Nucleic Acids Chemistry from the University of Houston in 2001. ^[8] She worked for the company Agilent where she was Director of Applications and Chemistry R&D—Genomics before starting the company Twist Bioscience.

Leproust participated in a March 2021 tabletop exercise at the Munich Security Conference simulating an outbreak of weaponized monkeypox. ^[9]

Allegations of fraud and class action lawsuit

On February 6, 2020, Twist Bioscience agreed to pay $22.5 million in settlement with Agilent. "Agilent sued Twist in 2016, alleging that Twist CEO and cofounder Emily Leproust stole trade secrets when she left Agilent to launch the provider of custom DNA products and services."

A class action case alleging fraud against Leproust and her company is pending. "Plaintiffs allege that from December 13, 2019 through November 14, 2022, Twist and its senior management misrepresented that the company possessed innovative proprietary technology to produce synthetic DNA at a higher quality and lower cost than competitors, positioning Twist for significant future growth. Plaintiffs further allege that defendants engaged in accounting improprieties to conceal the scheme."

On November 15, 2022, Scorpion Capital issued an exhaustive, 236-page short-seller report alleging serious fraud at Leproust's company, Twist Bioscience. The company called the report "misleading" and "inaccurate".

Publications

• Gnirke A, Melnikov A, Maguire J, Rogov P, LeProust EM, Brockman W, Fennell T, Giannoukos G, Fisher S, Russ C, Gabriel S. Solution hybrid selection with ultra-long oligonucleotides for massively parallel targeted sequencing. Nature biotechnology. 2009 Feb;27(2):182-9.
• Kaplan N, Moore IK, Fondufe-Mittendorf Y, Gossett AJ, Tillo D, Field Y, LeProust EM, Hughes TR, Lieb JD, Widom J, Segal E. The DNA-encoded nucleosome organization of a eukaryotic genome. Nature. 2009 Mar;458(7236):362-6.
• Goldman N, Bertone P, Chen S, Dessimoz C, LeProust EM, Sipos B, Birney E. Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA. Nature. 2013 Feb;494(7435):77-80.

References

1. "RFS Briefings - September 30, 2020". www.rosalindfranklinsociety.org. Retrieved 2024-09-03.
2. Leproust, Emily (2021-03-16). How synthetic biology can improve our health, food and materials . Retrieved 2024-09-03– via www.ted.com.
3. "How DNA synthesis is powering the fourth manufacturing revolution - with Emily Leproust - The SynBioBeta Podcast". pod.co. Retrieved 2024-09-03.
4. Goldman, Nick; Bertone, Paul; Chen, Siyuan; Dessimoz, Christophe; LeProust, Emily M.; Sipos, Botond; Birney, Ewan (February 2013). "Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA". Nature. 494 (7435): 77–80. Bibcode:2013Natur.494...77G. doi:10.1038/nature11875. PMC   3672958 . PMID   23354052.
5. Vitak, Sarah (3 March 2021). "Technology alliance boosts efforts to store data in DNA". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00534-w. PMID   33658669. S2CID   232112632.
6. "BIO Announces 2020 BIO IMPACT Award Winners" (Press release). BIO. 17 September 2020.
7. Rahman, Lu (2021-01-18). "Sitting down with…Emily Leproust, CEO, Twist Bioscience". Drug Discovery World (DDW). Retrieved 2024-09-03.
8. "Asking All the Right Questions: Emily Leproust ('01), Top Global Thinker | Give" . Retrieved 2024-09-03.
9. Yassif, Jaime; O'Prey, Kevin; Isaac, Christopher (November 2021). "Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats" (PDF). Nuclear Threat Initiative . Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-07-09. Retrieved 2022-07-09.

External links

• Emily LeProust publications indexed by Google Scholar