Farmacule sets down roots for new technology

A two-pronged business strategy is showing promise for Australia's leading player in molecular farming, Farmacule Bioindustries.

Farmacule is among dozens of companies in the worldwide competition to transform plant crops into protein-producing factories.

Its shortest path to revenue lies with licensing some aspects of its proprietary technology platform for manipulating gene expressions in plants.

Discussions are now underway with undisclosed multinational agribusinesses which could begin generating revenues within a year, says founder and managing director Prof James Dale.

The licensing talks are focused on non-core aspects of Farmacule's proprietary In Plant Activation (Inpact) platform. These allow control of valuable plant traits such as virus resistance, enhanced yield and male sterility.

But the longer-term Holy Grail for the company is all about inducing plants to express new compounds including therapeutic, diagnostic and industrial proteins.

Plant-based protein expression systems offer relatively shorter development and approval timeframes, high scalability and lower costs than traditional industrial fermentation methods.

Farmacule's priority is industrial proteins - the enzymes used in making wine, detergents, leather, textiles and pulp and paper. They represent a vast global market and in Australia are almost entirely imported.

"On the molecular farming side, the spectrum runs from low volume expression of high value, high regulation therapeutics to low value, high volume, low regulation industrial proteins," Dale says.

The company's blueprint calls for it to provide transgenic plants to growers who raise crops and harvest them under contract with the final step of protein purification reverting to Farmacule.

The company is making "good progress" in talks with potential growers in North Queensland, according to Dale although he acknowledges challenges remain in developing the appropriate transgenic plants and moving through the regulatory process.

'Encouraging' reactions He appears upbeat about the company's ability to satisfy the regulatory aspects of using broadacre farming to produce genetically-engineered crops.

Farmacule will base its production on sterile hosts or plants whose pollen transmission is limited to only a few meters in order to dampen concerns about cross-pollination from genetically-modified crops.

Dale said he has met with representatives of anti-GM lobby groups and characterised their reaction to the company's scenario as encouraging.

Farmacule was incorporated last October to commercialise the intellectual property developed by a team of molecular biologists headed by Dale at Queensland University of Technology.

Private equity raised through Queensland-based Orbit Capital and a $203,000 Biotech Innovation Fund grant is helping underwrite Farmacule's costs as it pursues its international licensing strategy and develops initial protein production capacity.

Its patented technology involves a novel gene activation system that targets and amplifies gene expression to specific parts of a plant with an emphasis on producing high value recombinant proteins

The strength of the technology has attracted US interest, including the attention of former Dow Chemical chief scientist, biotechnology and bioprocessing, Dr Paul Zorner.

Zorner has taken an equity position in the young company and sits on its board.