Replies to post #185397 on Biotech Values

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Gene Editing Will Change Everything—Just Not All at One Time
Transformative technology is still in its infancy but great things are expected in human health and industrial and agbio markets.

http://www.genengnews.com/keywordsandtools/print/3/36953/

An Agricultural Ecosystem Emerges Companies competing in the agricultural gene -editing space include firms providing tools and services, and those focused on product development and commercialization. The former group is composed of companies like Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals that serve both medical and agricultural markets with a broad variety of molecular biology products and services including gene editing. Examples of the latter group include Cibus, Precision Biosciences, Caribou Biosciences, Nova Synthetix, Cellectis, and Recombinetics. Only St. Paul, MN-based Recombinetics, which applies TALENs to the improvement of livestock, is a pure play agbio company. The others focus their gene-editing technology on various combinations of human therapeutics, agriculture, research use, and industrial products. Cibus, for instance, while primarily invested in agricultural gene editing, also applies its RTDS platform to the production of squalane. In addition, large, multinational chemical and life science companies have agricultural divisions that employ gene-editing technology acquired mostly through licensing arrangements with small specialist companies. Examples include Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer, Bayer CropSciences, and BASF Plant Sciences. Indeed, these global companies play a similar role to big pharma by providing funding, expertise, and geographic reach to small, innovative firms. Not far behind agricultural applications for gene editing are the industrial applications. Companies like Nucelis, Sigma Aldrich, and Precision Biosciences are working on high-performance oils for use in cosmetics and lubricants, biofuels, flavorings, and other high-margin specialty chemicals. In June 2013, Cellectis reported that its scientists, using MEGAs and TALENs, successfully engineered the genome of single-celled photosynthetic algae called diatoms for the purpose of producing biofuel. Nucelis is close to market with its squalane oil, a fully hydrogenated form of squalene, the natural compound, which it can scale to commercial quantities using a microbial production platform.