In October 2024, the company launched the Colossal Foundation , a non-profit dedicated to applying these technologies to today's endangered species. They are currently working on a vaccine for a deadly elephant virus (EEHV) and biobanking the "top 100" most imperiled species to ensure their genetic survival.
Rather than simple "cloning," Colossal uses a "de-extinction toolkit" to edit the DNA of a living relative to match an extinct ancestor. Colossal
: Developing hardware to grow embryos outside a living host. In October 2024, the company launched the Colossal
The story of most often refers to Colossal Biosciences , a Dallas-based biotechnology company founded in 2021 by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church. Their mission is to "make extinction a thing of the past" by using advanced genetic engineering to bring back functional versions of extinct species and preserve those currently at risk. The Mission: De-Extinction and Preservation : Developing hardware to grow embryos outside a living host
: In April 2025, Colossal announced the birth of the first "functional de-extincted" animals: three dire wolf pups named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi.