Jun 30, 2020

New Connate product line by AgBiome secures patent protection

Agbiome, which develops products from the Earth’s microbial communities, announced a recent patent directed toward the Connate product line granted in the United States, further strengthening AgBiome’s IP Protection around novel product offerings.

Connate products, currently in development,  have the same biological component such as Howler fungicide with the addition of a synthetic chemistry. Connate products aim to meet the grower demands for effective products while reducing the amount of chemical residues on the plant. 

“Microbiomes hold the solutions to many problems facing agriculture and food production. AgBiome has addressed these issues by assembling an extensive, continuously growing microbial collection, data science infrastructure, and screening platform, Genesis, from which we discover and develop our innovative crop protection biological products,” Eric Ward, co-founder of AgBiome said in a news release. “This most recent patent toward the Connate product line reinforces AgBiome’s focus on harnessing the power of the plant microbiome to create new, efficacious products,” added Ward.

AgBiome’s patent estate provides protection throughout the depth of the AgBiome crop protection R&D pipeline. As the pipeline identifies novel bacterial strains that possess fungicidal, insecticidal, and/or nematicidal activity, AgBiome continues to file patent applications to protect these valuable assets. To date, AgBiome has 264 pending U.S. and international patent applications, with 28 issued or granted U.S. or foreign patents. 

Howler fungicide is an effective, EPA-approved biological fungicide and is the first commercial product to come out of the robust AgBiome crop protection pipeline.  AgBiome is enjoying significant success pursuing patent protection on its commercial offerings, with 12 granted U.S. patents and six international patents protecting Howler fungicide and/or the Connate product line and additional patent applications pending.

Genesis unlocks the potential of microbes in a systematic and targeted manner to identify the best candidates for advancement in our biological crop protection product pipelines. Key components of this platform include our robust laboratory screens, cutting-edge data science capabilities, and ever-expanding database of genomic sequences. Real-time integration of data throughout the platform provides immediate insight, allowing us to make data-driven decisions informed by genomic information and performance. With Genesis AgBiome is able to uncover novel biological activity and subsequently prioritize screening of related microbes within our collection, quickly pointing us to more potent product candidates. One U.S. patent has been issued that covers aspects of the Genesis platform.

Theia is AgBiome’s second fungicide product to be developed using the GENESIS platform and reach the regulatory approval stage. It is an exciting biological fungicide and expected to reach the market in 2021.  Theia is a complementary biological fungicide to Howler. AgBiome continues to establish a strong patent estate to protect this next generation crop protection biological product. Currently, the Theia patent portfolio consists of 2 pending U.S. cases and 18 pending international applications.  

AgBiome partners with the microbial world to improve our planet. AgBiome discovers and develops innovative biological and trait products for crop protection. The proprietary Genesis discovery platform efficiently captures diverse, unique microbes for agriculturally relevant applications, and screens them with industry-best assays for insect, disease, and nematode control. Through its commercial subsidiary, AgBiome develops and sells proprietary crop protection solutions. The first of these, Howler, is a revolutionary fungicide for disease control in a broad variety of crops. AgBiome and Genective recently formed a strategic partnership to establish a new leader in insect traits, a market with over $5 billion in annual opportunities. AgBiome has a global R&D collaboration with Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE: ELAN), to develop nutritional health products for swine. AgBiome’s LifeEDIT subsidiary deploys proprietary genome editing systems to address human genetic diseases and high-value crop traits. 

For more information, visit http://agbiome.com.