Colossal Biosciences has made its name in exploring the possibilities of animal conservation and de-extinction. While topics like bringing back a woolly mammoth are at the forefront of everyone’s mind, they also have even more projects going to save animals that are at risk of going extinct.
CBR had the opportunity to sit with Chief Animal Officer/Executive Director of the Colossal Foundation, Matt James, to discuss his journey to joining Colossal and how his time with the company has impacted him and conservation. We also discussed some animals he would love to try and bring back, as well as the pop culture influences that define his work at Colossal.
CBR: How did you find yourself at Colossal?
Matt James: Before Colossal, I spent 15 years working in a nonprofit zoo. I worked at Lowery Park Zoo in Tampa, and then I was the general curator at Zoo Miami. Most recently, I was the senior director of the Dallas Zoo. So, I worked in nonprofit-based conservation organizations looking for ways that we could create captive populations of animals as insurance policies against extinction.
I spent 15 years doing that, growing into leadership positions, and when I got there, I thought, “We’ve done it. We’re here. I’m going to go make all the changes I wanted to see in the world.” And right about that same time, I started to have the realization that this wasn’t the scope or scale or rate of change that I really desired. And that’s when Ben [Lamm] was launching Colossal, and he approached me because we had a mutual friend and said, “Hey, can you help me sort of develop some strategies for animal care, conservation? I’m starting a company to bring back the woolly mammoth.”
He and I went to dinner a couple of times, actually. And I told him what I thought — what was dumb about the idea, quite frankly. We had a few conversations where I said, “I don’t get it, dude. But I’m happy to help you. I’ll set you up with somebody.” Eventually, you quickly realize he’s very motivated. So I was like, “Well, you know, this guy knows how to build companies. He knows how to make change. He knows how to raise money. This is a platform that has this scale and the rate of change that I think could be really meaningful to conservation.”
So in late 2021, I jumped in as the Chief Animal Officer.
In that role, I oversee everything from animal care management, welfare of all the animals we study today, like Dale the mouse and all the mice and dunnarts in our inner vivariums, to all the species we study in the wild and the species we have in ranch properties across the United States. I also manage the embryology team. They develop embryos from an edited cell line. I have another team called assisted reproduction. They take the embryo from embryology and put it into life surrogates. Then those animals give birth to the species we’re bringing back.
I have a team of people who take care of them after that. I’m also the executive director of the Colossal Foundation. So all the conservation stuff you saw on our tour, that’s through the Colossal Foundation. We launched that last October. It’s our 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation, which we raised $75 million for. So $75 million to figure out how we can apply technologies that you see in that lab today and apply those directly to critically endangered species.
I really like how you met with Ben and how you challenged him on the mammoth idea. Is that dynamic something that you have fostered in your relationship? Are you always the one who asks the questions that need to be asked?
image by Ryan Rice
When Ben has an idea, and he is dead set, he’ll figure out a way to make it work. A lot of people can feel bulldozed by that. I have those same issues from time to time, where I’m like, “I don’t know, should I challenge him?” Ben’s always made room for me to be able to come in and speak. Our worlds are very different, and our expertise is very different. But he’s always made a lot of room for me to be able to say, “That’s not a good idea. We should try this.” And then he’ll challenge me back and say, “That’s too conventional. That’s too backwards thinking; we need to be looking forward.” So it’s been a good back and forth relationship.
Were there elements in preparing to care for the dire wolves that intimidated you?
Hell yeah. I think everything was intimidating with the dire wolf. First of all, can you do it? All the angst and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into creating the dire wolf to see that first one… Like when Romulus first came out, to see that flash of white and realize, “We’ve done it!” Then suddenly that sense of urgency and responsibility to make sure that de-extinction works. Now we have to make sure this animal lives and is living a happy, healthy life, experiencing optimal welfare. So, our animal care and management team spent a lot of time devising a 200-page document that is the world’s first animal care manual for species that haven’t existed in 12,000 years.
They never existed with modern humans. So we don’t have the answers. But what’s great is our team comes with a lot of experience, decades of experience from exotic animal care and from zoos. Animals vary from species to species. So there are a lot of times when you’re taking knowledge from one species and applying it to another. So we did that same extrapolation exercise. We worked with experts, not just internally, but to figure out how we take care of really large carnivores, how we take care of large canids, and we developed a great animal care manual. But a big piece of it is also being very adaptable and agile.
One of the things with the dire wolves that I found great was your work with red wolf conservation. It’s a major breakthrough and one of many that you’ve been able to experience here at Colossal. How has it felt knowing that you not only live in a time where these things are possible, but also that you’re playing such a hands-on role in these breakthroughs?
Dire wolves Romulus and Remus
Image via Colossal Biosciences
To think that just doing one of these projects, just the dire wolf or just the red wolf, would be a career moment for anybody. To have the opportunity to do both is such a unique privilege. And then to do both of those while doing whatever 10 other projects that we’re doing… It’s been a huge responsibility, and an incredible privilege and honor. I never felt more satisfied in a position, where you feel like you can see your impact.
I think in most cases, the way we develop our conservation strategies is we have these projects that we want to restore species from extinction, and then we identify species that can benefit from all the technologies for the de-extinction. This case was almost flipped, because we identified the red wolf as a project that we should be working on. It’s the world’s most endangered wolf. There are fewer than 25 out in the wild, and it is the only endemic wolf to the United States.
So it’s a wolf that is truly American and only American. We thought, “Well, we need to be able to make a meaningful change for it.” The genetic technology in order to make that change also led to the dire wolf, which is incredible. Finding ways to show that de-extinction isn’t some separate idea from conservation, that is a really important message for me — to show that they’re intrinsically woven together, that de-extinction drives conservation, and that conservation needs de-extinction. I think the dire wolf and red wolf have been able to show that really nicely.
Can you tell me a bit about your history with marine biology and how what you’re doing at Colossal could impact ocean conservation?
So when I left undergrad, I went to graduate school studying marine biology, and that was my first dip into ecology. I studied marine ecology and sea turtle nesting in Edisto Beach, South Carolina. I eventually started working with dolphins and other marine animals. So it’s always at the center for me, understanding that 70% of the world is a marine environment. It’s the largest open space for us to make an impact. Understanding that oceans are changing, pH and temperature are quickly changing and bleaching coral reefs.
And coral reefs are unique, almost rainforest-like ecosystems for biodiversity. And the role that marine ecosystems play in things like oxygen production for the world. It’s really important that we figure out projects. Colossal hasn’t committed to or launched any projects around it, but it’s at the forefront of our minds constantly. We know the problems that exist with the coral reef. And now we’ve also identified corals that are more temperature-tolerant, that are more pH-tolerant. How can we start to work on that?
It’s certainly something we’d love to get into. It’s not a project right now because coral propagation is so difficult. So a big piece of everything you do in de-extinction has a reproduction component. We have to unlock some of the coral reproduction, not just spawning, but how do you actually do the embryology work that we do in mammals in an inverted rigged species like a coral. We’re figuring all that out. If we can unlock some of that, then I think you can really take off and make changes for coral.
There are so many ancient aquatic animals. In a perfect world where everything is going as smoothly as it has been and you’re able to get into the aquatic space, are there any particular animals that you would love to try to bring back?
Image via Colossal Biosciences
Man, so many. I think Steller’s sea cow is one that we talk about all the time. So if you’re not familiar with Steller’s sea cow, it’s like a manatee or dugong. But it’s the size of a whale, I think four times the size of a manatee. They went extinct up in the northwest of the United States, Canada, and Alaska, where they were just overhunted because they floated at the surface and were easy pickings. I forget the precise timeline, but it was less than 100 years from when Steller first described the sea cow to when it was extinct.
That’s a unique opportunity for our projects like EXO-Dev, the Exogenous Development Team, because we have the technology and the DNA to bring back Steller’s sea cow today. We don’t have the ability to gestate one because they’re so large. There is no good gestational surrogate for that species today. But what that group is doing in the EXO-Dev lab, creating artificial womb technologies, is the way that you can begin to unlock a lot of those strategies. If we can unlock some of the artificial womb work, then suddenly things like Steller’s sea cow become an opportunity. That would be so cool.
How has it been seeing the artificial wombs and how they’ve progressed? What does it feel like seeing these wombs get bigger and bigger to the point where eventually, hopefully, a woolly mammoth will grow in one?
I think it’s nuts, we work at a company where we talk about bringing back woolly mammoths, thylacines, dodos, dire wolves, and people say, that’s science fiction. But to us, it’s every day. We’re talking about it every day — not about whether it will happen, but when it will happen. So that sets a weird context or bar of expectation. And then the next level up from that is artificial wombs.
It’s so much fun going in there and seeing the progress that that team makes. And so we’re working the problem from two ends. You have the conception of life, when those embryos first develop, and we start driving towards development. And at the back end, we started working on advanced incubation, and we’re trying to meet in the middle so we’ll have the full spectrum of development from single cell, all the way up to birth. What that could do in terms of scaling recovery for endangered species in the wild is something people don’t even understand yet. But if we suddenly needed to recover the northern white rhino, and there are only two white rhinos left, well, we can only make two a year or two every few years. And so your pace of recovery is really limited by the number of available females in a population; suddenly, if you unlock artificial womb technology, there is no limit.
What are some sci-fi projects that have influenced you being with Colossal, or that you now look at differently, or get inspired by?
Grant showing Tim and Lex a dino bone in Jurassic Park 1993
Image via Universal Pictures
Oh, man, that’s a good question. Because we live in a sci-fi world, it feels like I think they could make a science fiction story about what we’re doing, and sometimes I look at things like — and this is probably not the right association that you want to make — but you look at artificial wombs, and you think “Well, that’s very Matrix-y.” This idea of how can we create these bubbles that are developing humans like in The Matrix; but for us, it’s wildlife. I think for me, science fiction is really inspiring everything we do.
I think this idea of de-extinction wasn’t really a thing until Michael Crichton brought it to life, and Jurassic Park inspired a lot of us. We might not be bringing back dinosaurs, but we’re taking that idea that Michael Crichton had, and we’re putting it into a real world environment. So I stay really close to that, because I remember vividly being a kid, going to the movies that summer with my family watching the first Jurassic Park and being like “Holy crap, I never thought I’d work in a company that had that capability.”