Durham, North Carolina, USA
June 6, 2024
Pairwise licensing program accelerates innovation in agriculture and increases access to transformative CRISPR technology
Pairwise, a company pioneering the application of CRISPR technology in food and agriculture, has granted a full technology license to its proprietary Fulcrum™ Platform to Solis Agrosciences. Through this license, Solis will be using Pairwise’s tools to drive innovative solutions to their clients’ global food and climate challenges.
Licensees of the Fulcrum Platform can receive access to Pairwise’s full suite of novel technologies and proprietary tools for applying CRISPR to research, develop, and commercialize products with differentiated plant genetics.
Solis provides robust product design and R&D services to many different plant science clients, offering access to technologies that accelerate scientific breakthroughs and the path to commercialization. Solis will first leverage the Fulcrum Platform to develop new traits. Once a product is ready to move from the R&D stage to commercialization, Solis’ clients can obtain a commercial license through Pairwise to take their products to market.
“Our experienced team utilizes advanced technology platforms to reduce our clients’ product development timelines in traditional row crops as well as specialty crops,” said Susan Martino-Catt, Solis Chief Operating Officer. “Pairwise is pioneering CRISPR in agriculture, and bringing new, advanced solutions to the marketplace. Their Fulcrum Platform can improve R&D efficiency and provides a streamlined commercial pathway for our clients’ products. We are excited to use the Fulcrum Platform to support our current clients and also to engage with a new set of clients, helping them to advance their product pipelines.”
“CRISPR has the potential to transform agriculture and provide enormous benefits to consumers, growers, and the environment,” said Ian Miller, Pairwise Chief Development Officer. “Pairwise’s novel tools and commercial rights have been used to create and deliver new products across many crops, including corn, wheat, soy, canola, bananas, coffee, berries, and cherries. In addition to the products we’ve created, we’re excited to now empower other organizations – like Solis and, by extension, their clients – to develop their own CRISPR-edited products that will deliver the enormous potential of the technology.”
The Fulcrum Platform includes Pairwise-developed gene editing tools for cutting, base editing, and templated editing – a toolbox which enables not only turning a characteristic on or off, but also tuning it – like a dimmer switch to dial a trait up or down, such as creating a new type of corn with up to 20% more kernel rows.
Important technologies which enable the Fulcrum Platform include Pairwise’s novel SHARC™, base editing, and the REDRAW™ templated editing system.
- SHARC is a proprietary enzyme that works well for cutting, base editing, and REDRAW editing, and is the foundation for a proprietary and comprehensive genome editing toolbox.
- Pairwise’s proprietary base editing and diversification tools enable innovators to “tune” CRISPR edits with great precision. Alongside REDRAW, Pairwise’s templated editing solution, these tools allow access to a wide range of genetic variation, which is key to creating new, distinctive plant varieties much faster and more effectively than conventional breeding.
“We look forward to the team at Solis using our Fulcrum Platform to accelerate their clients’ product research and working with those clients on licensing commercial rights in the future,” said Miller.
Whether through licensing, collaborations, or in-house product development, scientists leverage Pairwise’s leading CRISPR tools, IP, and full Fulcrum Platform for applications in crops of global importance, including climate-friendly short corn, bananas and coffee, blackberries, leafy greens, and more.
Learn more about licensing the Fulcrum Platform, as well as opportunities to develop new products through a collaborative partnership with Pairwise, here.
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