Overview
- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Colossal Biosciences announced a memorandum of understanding on June 25, 2026 to build a national BioVault that aims to cryopreserve cells, reproductive tissues and genomic DNA for the roughly 2,100–2,300 species listed under the Endangered Species Act.
- Colossal says it will fund and operate the vault with an initial pledge in the tens of millions of dollars while the memorandum does not obligate federal funding, and the organizations that provide samples will retain ownership of their material.
- Fish and Wildlife will set conservation priorities and supply the field networks and regulatory authority needed for large-scale collection, but sampling will be limited to minimally invasive methods and opportunistic recovery of carcasses or zoo mortalities, which constrains access to gametes and whole organs.
- Before freezing samples the partners plan to produce standardized, fully sequenced genomic records and to develop induced pluripotent stem cell methods, and Colossal says the archive will be redundant across sites and open to researchers worldwide.
- The project builds on years of fragmented biobanking, such as Colossal’s Dallas collection of about 200 species and other global partnerships, and it raises governance and ethical questions about oversight, permissible uses of engineered genomes and long-term funding.