From a childhood spent in the forests of southwest Poland to building a new kind of biotech company in Cambridge, Ola Wlodek is drawn to systems, how they work, and how they can be rebuilt to do better things.
In this In Focus interview, Ola explains Constructive Bio’s core idea: redesigning genomes from the ground up so cells can make products that nature never evolved to produce. She also shares the less glossy parts of the journey, including fundraising when biotech felt “near radioactive”, hiring in a post-Brexit talent market, and learning how to tell a story that does justice to novel science without perplexing potential investors.
Themes
Change the operating system, not just the code
Most biotech tweaks individual genes. Constructive Bio takes a different route: treating the genome as the “operating system” of a cell, designing whole genomes in silico, then building organisms with synthetic genomes that can incorporate new-to-nature building blocks. The aim is practical: create “green cell bio factories” that can make valuable products more efficiently.
Use biology to make chemistry cleaner
Ola’s excitement about biology is grounded in industrial reality. Cells scale naturally, rely on common carbon and nitrogen sources, and can produce complex molecules via fermentation. Constructive’s thesis is that, by bridging biology and chemistry, you can make complex products with lower energy demands and a much smaller waste burden.
Start with a painful problem: manufacturing
One early application area is peptides containing non-canonical amino acids, where manufacturing can be costly and waste-heavy. Ola points to GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro as an example of the current trade-off: made via synthetic chemistry, with 14,000kgs of chlorinated waste generated per kilogram of product. Constructive Bio can utilise biology to manufacture these molecules with fewer harmful by-products. This is better for both supply chains and the planet.
Build a culture obsessed with outcomes, not optics
Ola describes her leadership style as anti-bureaucracy and pro-delivery. The goal is to give people room to make decisions without “cultural ping pong”, focus energy on the work that matters, and keep transparency high so teams can move fast and help each other.
That approach shows up in hiring too. Because “no one in the world has two decades of experience in synthetic genomics”, Constructive prioritises accountability, urgency, and technical capability over conventional pattern-matching.
Prove reproducibility early, then earn the right to celebrate
A key early milestone was reproducing foundational experiments outside the original academic lab. In an era where reproducibility is a real concern, seeing the work translate into Constructive’s own lab was both a relief and a confidence shift.
Commercially, Ola highlights three moments: first revenue, then the first major long-term contract with a well-capitalised partner, and the realisation that “someone will pay for it”. Even then, the instinct is to move on quickly. Relief, then the next step.
Fundraising and storytelling are part of the science
Ola is clear about what was hard: raising a Series A in a hostile biotech market, building the first 20-person team in the UK, and learning to communicate something genuinely novel without sounding “scary” to potential partners.
The irony is familiar in deep tech: people are both desensitised by hype, and sceptical that anything beyond the known can really work. Constructive’s response has been evidence: data, performance, scalability, and a narrative that does not over-promise.
Why we invested
Constructive Bio sits at the boundary between biology and chemistry, with the potential to change how industry makes high-value molecules. The company’s approach is ambitious but specific: redesign whole genomes to expand what cells can manufacture, then apply that capability to real manufacturing constraints, from waste to scalability.
This maps to our Human and Planet investment themes: technologies that reduce industrial waste and energy demand, while enabling the next generation of precisely engineered therapeutics.
About the founder
Ola is the CEO of Constructive Bio. She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge and executive MBA from Warwick Business School. Her scientific interests in genetic engineering of GC-rich microbes, unnatural products and peptide cyclisation led her to seek transformative applications of synthetic biology in the real world. Prior to joining Constructive Bio, she worked for various companies in the Cambridge biotech cluster, most recently as Chief Operating Officer at Reflection Therapeutics.
