New Brighton, Minnesota, USA
July 15, 2015
Calyxt, Inc., a Minnesota-based company focusing on developing healthier food products, today announced that it has signed an exclusive license agreement with Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL) for a bread wheat trait generated using gene editing. The trait provides endogenous resistance to powdery mildew of wheat, a fungus widely distributed throughout the world, responsible for major grain and yield losses.
“As part of our product development strategy, we are now in-licensing traits developed by world class academic institutions to boost our pipeline of products in various crops. Implementation of this trait will enable broader adoption of our healthier wheat products,” said Luc Mathis, Chief Executive Officer of Calyxt, Inc.
Dr Jan Chojecki, PBL's managing director, said “This scientific breakthrough was made by Prof Caixia Gao at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and its importance has been recognized by its publication last year in Nature Biotechnology. We are delighted to partner Calyxt in the development and application of this exciting innovation.”
About Calyxt
Founded in 2010, Calyxt, Inc. (previously Cellectis plant sciences, Inc.) is based in New Brighton, Minnesota (USA). The company aims to create healthier crop products such as high-oleic/low trans fat soybean oil, cold-storable potato, gluten reduced wheat and low saturated fat canola oil for the food and agriculture industries. Calyxt is developing a network of partnerships in order to secure accessibility of its food products to consumers. For further information please visit our website: www.calyxt.com
Calyxt™ and the corporate logo are trademarks owned by Calyxt, Inc.
About PBL
PBL (Norwich, UK) invests in and promotes innovative technologies from public and private sources worldwide and is owned jointly by the John Innes Centre, The Sainsbury Laboratory, and the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council). PBL has the right to sublicense this mildew resistant wheat developed by the Institute of Developmental Genetics and Biology. Reference: Wang et al. ‘Simultaneous editing of three homoeoalleles in hexaploid bread wheat confers heritable resistance to powdery mildew'. Nature Biotechnology doi:10.1038/nbt.2969, 20 July 2014. For further information please visit: www.pbltechnology.com
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