Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri, USA
February 8, 2018
TechAccel LLC announced today it has completed a science advancement investment with Plastomics Inc., a St. Louis-based biotechnology startup making better crops through chloroplast engineering.
“Plastomics’ technology holds tremendous promise in its ability to manipulate genetic material in the chloroplast,” said TechAccel’s Chief Science Officer Brad Fabbri, Ph.D. “If successfully developed for corn or other row crops, chloroplast transformation offers a number of unique benefits over ‘traditional’ nuclear transformation, including potential high expression levels of a transgene, ease of combining (‘stacking’) multiple transgenes in the same plant and not having the transgenic traits transmitted via pollen drift.”
TechAccel’s investment will fund a science advancement initiative designed to accelerate the development of Plastomics’ technology and a new chloroplast-expressed insect control trait collaboration currently in development. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
Jeffrey Staub, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Science Officer, Plastomics Inc.
“We are excited to work with TechAccel in expanding our trait development pipeline,” said Jeffrey Staub, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Science Officer of Plastomics. “This new insect control trait will greatly benefit from the high dosage and increased efficacy that our chloroplast engineering platform provides.”
Transgenic chloroplast-transformed plantlets in a growth media.
Founded in 2016, Plastomics recently announced the closing of an early round of seed funding with investments from BioGenerator and The Yield Lab, both St. Louis-based investors.
TechAccel is a technology and venture development organization focused in agriculture and animal health. The company invests in innovative technology and funds science advancement programs to accelerate readiness for commercialization.
About TechAccel
TechAccel LLC was founded in 2014 as a first-of-its-kind technology and venture development company in the agriculture and animal health sectors. TechAccel sources, invests in and acquires early-stage innovations. Through collaborations with universities and research institutions, TechAccel conducts advancement and de-risking research and development to ready technologies for commercialization. For more information, visit www.techaccel.net. Follow us on Twitter at @Tech_Accel.
About Plastomics
Plastomics is a plant biotechnology company making better, safer and more effective crops through chloroplast engineering. Plastomics will help farmers meet the challenges facing agriculture today: population growth, climate change, water scarcity, pests and weeds. Chloroplast engineering is a fast, efficient, and more predictable way to introduce multiple traits into important crops that can also reduce time to market. New crops with multiple trait solutions can be delivered faster to farmers using Plastomic’s technology. For more information visit www.plastomics.com.
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