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Cibus Subsidiary Nucelis Granted Patent For Increasing Efficiency Of Vitamin D Production
New Patent Strengthens Cibus’ Comprehensive Intellectual Property Portfolio
San Diego – March 05, 2020 - Cibus, a pioneer of precision gene editing in agriculture, today announced its microbial strain development subsidiary, Nucelis, has been granted a new patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for increasing vitamin D production. In building on both Nucelis’ and Cibus’ comprehensive intellectual property portfolios, the new patent is related to improving vitamin D2 and D3 production — highly valued components in the food, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries.
“The new patent further strengthens Nucelis’ position in offering significant improvements in the efficiency and cost to producers of vitamin D2 and D3. This builds on our prior work to make key vitamin D intermediates via fermentation using new yeast strains developed using our proprietary gene editing technologies,” said Sean O’Connor, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Nucelis. “This adds to Cibus’ significant IP portfolio of more than 350 patents that include IP to precisely target natural gene-editing processes in plants and micro-organisms.
“We are excited to publish and protect this new method as efficient and sustainable production of vitamin D is important today as we further understand the importance of vitamin D for human health,” commented Laszlo Treiber, Ph.D., Nucelis Research Fellow and sole inventor on the patent. “The medical community has increased its attention to the importance of vitamin D in the past decade. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to an increased incidence of bone fractures, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune and thyroid disorders, cognitive degeneration, and certain cancers.”
About Cibus
Cibus is a biotechnology company using precision gene editing to lead the development of new traits for the global agricultural seed industry. Its family of technologies, known as the Rapid Trait Development System, RTDS™, is broadly applicable to all organisms, including plants, yeast, bacteria, and algae. RTDS edits genes precisely without integrating foreign genetic material to speed development of products genetically indistinguishable from those found in nature. New traits are designed to help agriculture provide more sustainable food sources, reduce agriculture’s impact on the environment and reduce the impact of climate change. Cibus has established crop platforms in canola, rice, flax, potato, and is developing platforms in wheat, corn, soybean, and peanut. New traits provide access to multiple royalties through a well-established business model in the multi-billion-dollar global seed market. The company has subsidiaries in Europe and North America and a state-of-the-art research and development center in San Diego, California.
About Nucelis
Nucelis is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cibus, a biotechnology company with advanced technologies to precisely target and direct a plant’s natural gene-editing processes. The Nucelis Accelerated Strain Advancement Platform (ASAP™) is a specialty ingredient development platform that combines the precision of the Cibus suite of gene-editing technologies, the Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™), with advanced fermentation and pilot scale facilities and experience, and proprietary downstream, and purification processes. This approach enables Nucelis to efficiently develop and deliver high-value, performance-focused, non-transgenic specialty ingredients for partners in the nutrition, personal care, flavor, and fragrance markets, and for future applications in Ag biologicals, active pharmaceutical ingredients (API’s), human health, and animal health.
