Colossal Biosciences Hatches Live Chicks from Fully Artificial Eggs, Advancing the Path to Moa De-Extinction

A new generation of shell-less incubation technology supports complete avian embryo development without supplemental oxygen, at any scale

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Colossal Biosciences, the world's first de-extinction company, today announced that it has successfully hatched multiple healthy chicks from fully artificial eggs. Colossal's incubation platform supports complete avian embryo development outside a biological eggshell, from early embryo to hatch, without the need for supplemental oxygen. The breakthrough is a critical step on the path to de-extincting the South Island Giant Moa and opens new possibilities for avian conservation and biotechnology.

Prior shell-less culture systems, first attempted in the 1980s, required large volumes of pure oxygen that cause DNA damage, limit scalability, and are incompatible with standard commercial incubators. Colossal's team overcame this barrier by engineering a lattice shell architecture incorporating a novel bioengineered silicone-based membrane that matches the oxygen transfer capacity of a natural eggshell under normal atmospheric conditions. The result is a device compatible with standard commercial incubators, manufacturable at scale, and explicitly size-scalable to accommodate eggs far beyond those of any living bird.

"Every new scalable system for de-extinction is ultimately a biology problem wrapped in an engineering problem," said Ben Lamm, CEO and Co-Founder of Colossal Biosciences. "At Colossal, we didn't just replicate the egg; we re-engineered it from first principles to create something more scalable and controllable. This is what multidisciplinary science makes possible, bringing together biology, materials science, and engineering to solve one of nature's most elegant systems."

The platform is essential to the moa program. A South Island Giant Moa (Dinornis robustus) egg is estimated to have been approximately 80 times the volume of a chicken egg and roughly eight times the volume of an emu egg, placing it entirely beyond the capacity of any living avian surrogate. "The genome is the blueprint, but without a place to build, it's meaningless," said Professor Andrew Pask, Chief Biology Officer at Colossal. "The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate."

The largely transparent design enables continuous, real-time observation of embryo development throughout incubation, a significant capability for confirming edited traits in de-extinction science. The 3D-printed lattice shell is designed for transition to injection molding for low-cost, high-volume production, and additional size-scaled versions are already under development. The hatched chicks now live at the Colossal Avian Preserve.

"The avian reproductive toolkit has lagged behind mammalian systems for decades because birds present unique developmental challenges. The artificial egg changes that," said Dr. Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer of Colossal. "For species where surrogacy is impossible and genome recovery has outpaced our ability to use it, this is the missing piece: a controlled, scalable environment for development that is not limited by the availability of a host."

"The ability to hatch avian embryos outside a biological shell, at any size and in standard commercial incubators, is a capability conservation programs simply don't have today," said Matt James, Chief Animal Officer and head of The Colossal Foundation. "The artificial egg allows us to rescue compromised embryos, build genetic rescue platforms, and utilize donor and biobanked material in ways that weren't previously possible."

The Colossal artificial egg joins a growing suite of reproductive technologies Colossal has developed across its de-extinction and conservation programs, including implantation devices supporting early mammalian embryonic development and the Colossal Artificial Uterus.

About Colossal Biosciences Colossal was founded by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church, Ph.D., and is the first company to apply CRISPR technology for species de-extinction. Colossal creates innovative technologies for species restoration, critically endangered species protection, and the repopulation of critical ecosystems. Learn more at www.colossal.com.

Emily Mailaender // emily@colossal.com