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Over the past decade, CRISPR has made incredible progress thanks to significant private and public investment. But has this technology reached its full potential yet? And what should we expect from the future? That’s the big question I tackled in a presentation at World Agritech in San Francisco on March 20th.
“Over the past decade…depending on how you calculate, $4 billion to $6 billion has been invested in startups applying CRISPR to agriculture. The same amount or more has been invested. Significant public sector investment and funding has been made in plant gene editing research. As of January, 53 gene-edited traits had been identified in approximately 17 crops. It is exempted by the Department of Agriculture,” he said in a presentation.
However, he noted that CRISPR-inspired products have not yet been delivered at scale. You might even say that indicators of investor enthusiasm are declining.
“It’s probably fair to say that we haven’t seen any large-scale commercialization of gene-editing products with a significant impact on the market. And venture funding in gene editing in agriculture has plateaued in recent years. ” he said.
The question is: do we still believe that CRISPR is a disruptive and revolutionary technology that has the potential to usher in new breeding techniques? Do we still believe that CRISPR technology is a good investment opportunity that can realize future harvests?
Mr. Wu answered without a moment’s hesitation: “From Syngenta’s perspective, the answer is in the affirmative.”
To understand today’s reality of gene editing technology and its use, Wu said, we need to look to the last disruptive and revolutionary technology in plant breeding: transgenic technology for genetically engineered traits. . This technology was first announced by Syngenta scientist Mary Del Chilton in his 1983 year, but the first transgenic traits were not commercialized until his 1996 year. Why were there so many delays? The regulatory process is certainly part of the story, but not the whole story. Wu said the reason it took more than a decade was the fact that plant transformation techniques, while innovative, were not sufficient on their own to build transgenic traits.
“While there is no doubt that plant transformation is necessary for successful transgenic trade, there are also a number of associated applied technologies.” [as well]”
For transgenic traits, relevant technologies include trait genetic engineering, plant expression tools, and trait introgression techniques to introduce traits into elite varieties of hybrids.
So too has the slow adoption and commercial application of CRISPR.
“CRISPR technology itself is not a new breeding technique. Let’s be clear about that. It’s simply a tool that enables many possible breeding techniques,” Wu said.
The good news is that great progress has been made in recent years in taking CRISPR technology to the next step, which will enable new breeding techniques, he added. He shared several examples from his team at Syngenta that show CRISPR is finally reaching the tipping point needed for true commercialization.
The first important signpost is the diversification of CRISPR-Cas systems.
“Cas9 is efficient, but it has many limitations. A diverse CRISPR-Cas system is needed to realize new breeding techniques,” he said.
Already, many companies are developing alternative CRISPR systems, such as Wu’s reference to Pairwise. Syngenta developed his Cas12-based system, which is as efficient as Cas9 but overcomes many of Cas9’s limitations, including what Wu called its fuzzy IP path.
“If editing is easy, we can use current technology to develop traits through gene editing,” Wu said.
For example, Syngenta is currently working on several key properties, including shelf life extension and disease resistance in tomatoes and rust resistance in Asian soybeans.
“We are seeing many new properties in the pipeline being developed by a variety of public and private actors. Masu. [how] “GM technology has only been around for the past few decades, and that’s a good thing,” Wu said.
A second area of notable opportunity, and still largely overlooked, is that CRISPR can improve the efficiency of breeding processes.
“This is not widely appreciated,” Wu said.
For example, when gene editing techniques are combined in one step with a hybrid breeding process called doubled haploid technology and applied to trait introgression, the time required for trait introgression can be reduced from six to seven generations to one generation.
“With one cross, you can introduce that trait into any elite breed or hybrid,” Wu said.
Perhaps the biggest opportunity for CRISPR going forward is how gene editing can be applied to complex traits that require complex multiple genetic modifications and pathways.
“This could happen today. We see an opportunity and a possibility,” Wu said. “By combining gene editing with machine learning and even artificial intelligence, we can now create engineered genetic mutations. We see examples that demonstrate that. So this opportunity is going to be huge.”
The next phase of CRISPR will be the most exciting and the opportunity to make the biggest impact on the market.
“I hope we have moved beyond the stage of high expectations and the valley of disillusionment and into the stage of enlightenment,” Wu said. “From an investor perspective, we need to remain optimistic about the next five or 10 years in terms of innovation and investment opportunities.”
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