Canada
May 8, 2007
Source:
Ag-West Bio Inc. Bio-Bulletin Volume 2, Issue 3
Bio-Bulletin in PDF format:
http://www.agwest.sk.ca/publications/Bio-Bulletin/BBMay07.pdf
Agrisoma Biosciences Inc. (Agrisoma) provides innovative
products and technology solutions for sustainable agriculture
and improved human and animal health. Agrisoma is applying its
proprietary technology in the development of value enhanced
crops with higher yield, quality and commercial value, as well
as the efficient production of industrial and therapeutic
proteins in plant-based production systems.
Agrisoma’s technology, referred to as the ‘ACE System’ is a
proprietary gene delivery and expression platform capable of
simul-taneously introducing multiple genes into uniquely
modified regions of engineered plant chromo-somes in an
efficient and predictable way. Genes exhibit stable and
predictable expression from generation to generation, enabling
the creation of value enhanced crops and plants optimized for
the pro-duction of industrial and therapeutic proteins.
Agrisoma’s technology overcomes the limitations of conventional
gene transfer technologies in crops, such as reduced expression
levels due to random integration of genes, and limited capacity
to transfer large amounts of DNA - features that enable crops to
express multiple traits or large complex genes.
“The ACE System’s large carrying capacity and ability to express
multiple genes without gene silencing enables the creation of
novel products based on the expression of multiple gene
combinations”, explains Tom Mamic, President and CEO of
Agrisoma.
Agrisoma operates laboratories at the Saskatoon-based Industry
Partnership Facility of the National Research Council Plant
Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI), through a collaborative
agreement that provides space and support within the PBI
incubator facility.
Partnerships such as this can help to expedite the
commercialization of products when organizations are working
towards similar goals. Research areas of NRC-PBI include
metabolic modification of oilseeds to increase oil content for
specialty oils, and canola seed genomics. In 2006, Agrisoma
initiated an alliance with NRC-PBI to develop Brassica plants
producing value-added oils for industrial applications in the
bioproducts area.
“Working in the value enhanced crop market, Agrisoma can create
value for partners through attaining high, consistent expression
levels from multiple genes more rapidly and efficiently than
other conventional technology providers in the marketplace,”
says Mr. Mamic.
Agrisoma has also identified a unique opportunity to exploit the
high-level expression achieved with ACE technology in
plant-based systems as a means to compete in the market of
protein production.
Although the expression from proteins in plants has been
demonstrated, the development of systems with commercially
viable levels of expression has been limited. Agrisoma believes
its ACE technology can provide the mechanism to attain high
volume expression. Manufacturing costs, as well as flexibility
for developing cell lines expressing recombinant proteins are
primary considerations in the industry, making Agrisoma’s
technology a commercially attractive protein production package.
The adoption of genetically modified crops provides substantial
agronomic, economic, environmental, health and social benefits
to farmers and increasingly, to society at large. The
commercialization of crop varieties which are produced using
innovative technologies like Agrisoma’s will provide employment
and training to technical personnel in the area of value-added
agriculture. Canada - and Saskatoon in particular - has taken a
leadership position in the commercialization of modified crops.
Deployment of Agrisoma’s technology will help enhance this role.
Collaboration between emerging biotech companies and established
industry leaders, such as the one between Agrisoma and NRC-PBI,
will support the development of long-term, high value
commercialization programs and provide a vehicle for further
investment dollars in Canadian R&D.
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