Collaboration pipeline accelerated by early delivery of high efficiency knockout and base editing capabilities
DURHAM, N.C. – (Nov. 4, 2019) – Pairwise today announced the early completion of its development milestones in its collaboration with Bayer. Opened in 2018, Pairwise believes healthy food should be affordable, convenient and sustainable. This mission comes to life in its partnership with Bayer through the creation of new varieties that allow farmers to use fewer resources and to be more productive.
As part of its product development efforts, Pairwise is collaborating with Bayer to use gene editing to solve key challenges in five major row crops – corn, soybeans, wheat, canola and cotton. As part of the collaboration, milestones were established to ensure timely development of a state-of-the-art gene editing commercial pipeline at Pairwise.
“By accomplishing these milestones 16 months ahead of schedule, Pairwise has significantly accelerated our growing product pipeline,” said Dr. Tom Adams, CEO of Pairwise. “We have established a robust trait pipeline with the capacity to initiate nearly 400 unique constructs per year aimed at important commercial targets.”
The high throughput and high efficiency editing capability, including base editing, enables Pairwise to develop new products through the testing of a wide range of novel alleles across multiple crops, genes, and traits.
“We are pleased with the rapid progress Pairwise has made in developing robust gene editing capabilities” said Jeremy Williams, Senior Vice President and Head of Plant Biotechnology at Bayer.
Progress will enable new product development
Progress made on applying gene editing techniques to row crops within the Bayer-Pairwise collaboration will enable future product development when those tools are translated to fruits and vegetables.
“These capabilities put our teams in position to deliver breakthrough innovation in consumer-focused crops, which will translate into product benefits that will delight consumers,” said Pairwise’s Adams. “The breadth of the gene editing that we have developed unlocks tremendous potential to explore a variety of traits that will bring exciting changes to the produce aisle.”
