In a publication today in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, a team at CAMBIA in Australia unveils the ‘kernel’ of the world’s first ‘explicit open source’ biotechnology toolkit. These tools, and the precedent they establish, will allow the public-sector, small to medium enterprises and even large firms worldwide to explore new business models and begin a new era of transparent and cost-effective innovation in life sciences.

The technologies include TransBacter, a new method for transferring genes to plants, and GUSPlus, a new way of visualizing where these genes are and how they function. “These tools are seeding a growing movement – the BIOS Initiative – that will enable researchers, even in the poorest countries in the world, to be partners in the choice and development of the crop improvement technologies best suited to their own priorities”, says Richard Jefferson, founder and CEO of CAMBIA. “Most importantly, these new tools are provided under a new licensing paradigm that ensures that they are improved, shared and retained as a public resource.”

Today also sees the launch of BioForge, an online collaborative research platform for biological innovation, developed in partnership with CollabNet Inc. In the tradition of open source software, BioForge makes it possible for scientists to work together to craft new, deliverable technologies within a “protected
commons”.

“BioForge is a hands-on, evolving tool kit to make things happen. BioForge is about sharing capabilities and building communities of innovation to tackle the challenges of global health, poverty and hunger. These problems are best solved by empowering untapped resources - the countless creative people who are currently marginalized”, says Jefferson, an influential scientist who in 2003 was named as one of Scientific American’s 50 Top Technology Innovators and is a Fellow of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Members of the BioForge community will be able to use certified BIOS licenses to distribute their work. The BIOS Initiative provides a new licensing mechanism that encourages sharing of the core tools of innovation with all, while still allowing patenting of products, where necessary.

Not content with inventing new technology and new software communities, CAMBIA is also releasing new functionalities in its highly successful Patent Lens, which includes the world’s fastest free, full-text searchable patent database, with over 1.6 million patents in the life sciences. CAMBIA has flagged its intent to expand its scope beyond the life sciences to include all patents in many countries, to create comprehensive search capabilities and to assist with opportunities for patent system reform. CAMBIA has also just added the INPADOC patent status database to its free online service, now allowing any searchers to know the dynamic status of patent applications and patents in over 40 countries. “This expansion is part of our ongoing effort to restore transparency and trust in patent systems that are often perceived as misaligned with public interest”, says Greg Quinn, Senior Informatics Specialist at CAMBIA.

“BIOS is a model for a new innovation system for old challenges. It combines astute use of intellectual property, informatics, new biological sciences, and the unique human element that Internet communication now provides” says Jefferson.

CAMBIA is a private, independent, non-profit institute partially self-financed, with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, R&D grants, and other philanthropic agencies. TransBacter, GUSPlus, Patent Lens, BIOS and BioForge are all trademarks of CAMBIA™.

Link: CAMBIA researchers publish a groundbreaking study demonstrating the viability of non-Agrobacterium bacteria in plant gene transfer

About CAMBIA

For more than a decade, CAMBIA has been creating new tools and technologies to foster innovation and a spirit of collaboration in the biological sciences. Our institutional ethos is built around an awareness of the need and opportunity for local commitment to achieving lasting solutions to food security, agricultural and environmental problems.

CAMBIA, in Spanish and Italian, means 'change'. This meaning is at the very heart of CAMBIA's mission. CAMBIA founded the BIOS Initiative, Biological Innovation for an Open Society. The BIOS Initiative website provides a template license for a new mode of licensing technology that encourages improvements, modeled after the open source licensing concept in software but adapted for biological innovations including patented technologies.

CAMBIA was initially an acronym for the "Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture". However, CAMBIA's public good mandate has become broader, to encompass methods for all kinds of biological innovation. CAMBIA, a not-for-profit organization situated in Canberra, Australia, was founded over ten years ago by Richard Jefferson. While a PhD student at Colorado, Richard developed a technique that monitors the activity of transgenes by tagging them with the bacterial enzyme GUS. Richard provided this technology to many researchers and companies. Utilization of GUS, the world’s most widely licensed technology in agricultural biotechnology, is now ubiquitous in the world of plant genetics and Richard’s PhD thesis is the most widely-cited piece of literature in the discipline.

CAMBIA has three main areas of expertise:

Life Sciences

CAMBIA has developed enabling technologies for plant transformation, plant gene activity manipulation, monitoring and selection, and plant genotype comparisons, fingerprinting and indexing. All these technologies are being made broadly available under BIOS licensing.

Intellectual Property

CAMBIA has developed one of the world's largest and most comprehensive full-text searchable patent databases, including full text of all PCT, European and US patents relevant to the life sciences. CAMBIA’s IT professionals have also developed a clean user interface with INPADOC, which will be accessible to all. This will used by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), among others, to assist in patent searching.

Informatics (IT)

CAMBIA’s skilled IT team has developed many innovations while working on websites for the technologies mentioned above, including the DEKKO search engine and user-annotatable licenses and technology landscape white papers.

For more information, please visit www.cambia.org or www.bios.net