SAN DIEGO, Sept. 23, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cibus, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBUS), a leading agricultural technology company that develops plant traits to license to seed companies for royalties, today announced that Peter Beetham, Co-Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer, will participate in a panel discussion titled “Sowing Solutions: Innovations in Climate-Resilient Seeds” at the Food+ Forum during the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (“UNGA”) in New York, NY, on Thursday, September 26, at 12:50 pm ET.
“As a leader in the gene editing industry, Cibus is enabling the agriculture industry’s efforts to address the ramifications of climate change for the benefit of our global food systems,” said Peter Beetham, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer at Cibus. “Our participation in the Food+ Forum at the UNGA underscores the important role of gene editing technology as a solution that can accelerate development timelines, while also reducing cost, to ensure novel innovations find their way to market as fast as possible. Cibus’ RTDS–based high throughput breeding system is at the forefront of developing improved crops that are more adaptive to changing environmental conditions, helping to manage plant diseases and optimize nutrient usage. By fostering global regulatory alignment, we can fully harness the potential of gene editing to produce food that meets the needs of a growing global population while bolstering farmer productivity in a sustainable way.”
The Food+ Forum, hosted by Foreign Policy Magazine, will convene leading experts, scientists, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are building more sustainable food systems, through advancing crop science and regenerative agriculture, enhancing soil sustainability and nutrient density, and providing innovative financing and safety nets to bolster food system resilience. For more information or to register, please visit: Food+ @ UNGA79 – Foreign Policy.
About Cibus
Cibus is a leading independent plant trait company that develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties. Cibus is not a seed company, but rather a technology company that uses its proprietary gene editing technology to develop and commercialize plant traits at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional breeding. Cibus’ strategy is focused on commercializing productivity traits for the world’s major row crops with large acreage such as: canola, rice, soybean, corn and wheat. The Company targets traits that help manage farmers’ seed productivity and sustainability challenges such as weeds, disease, and insects. The United Nations estimates that the impacts from these challenges cost the global economy approximately $300 billion annually. Cibus has a current portfolio of six traits, three of which are in commercial development and four of which are multi-crop traits associated with weed management and disease, including Sclerotinia resistance and a new weed management trait which are in advanced greenhouse and field trial stages.
About the Cibus Trait Machine™ process and Rapid Trait Development System™
A key element of Cibus’ technology breakthrough is its high-throughput breeding process (referred to as the Trait Machine™ process). The Trait Machine process is a crop specific application of Cibus’ patented Rapid Trait Development System™ (RTDS®). The proprietary technologies in RTDS integrate crop specific cell biology platforms with a series of gene editing technologies to enable a system of end-to-end crop specific precision breeding. It is the core technology platform for Cibus’ Trait Machine process: the first standardized end-to-end semi-automated crop specific gene editing system that directly edits a seed company’s elite germplasm. Each Trait Machine process requires a crop specific cell biology platform that enables Cibus to edit a single cell from a customer’s elite germplasm and grow that edited cell into a plant with the Cibus edits. Cibus has a Trait Machine process developed for canola and rice and has already begun transferring their elite germplasm with Cibus edits back to customers.
The traits from Cibus’ RTDS-based high-throughput breeding system are indistinguishable from traits developed using conventional breeding or from nature. RTDS does not integrate any foreign DNA or transgenes. Under the European Commission’s current proposals, it is expected that products from Cibus’ RTDS gene editing platform such as its Pod Shatter Reduction trait and Sclerotinia resistance traits for Canola and Winter Oilseed Rape would be considered ‘Conventional-like’.
Cibus believes that RTDS and the Trait Machine process represent the technological breakthrough in plant breeding that is the ultimate promise of plant gene editing: “high-throughput gene editing systems operating as an extension of seed company breeding programs.” In 2024, the Trait Machine process was cited by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most innovative products in 2024.
Because the Trait Machine process is intended to be integrated into seed companies’ breeding operations, the customer relationship between Cibus and seed companies with which it engages is a collaborative relationship in which seed companies transfer elite germplasm to have a specific validated trait placed in the seed company’s elite germplasm and expectation of delivery back to the seed company of their elite germplasm with the Cibus edit toward commercial development. Accordingly, Cibus refers to seed company “customers” in its disclosure once such a customer relationship has been initiated.
CIBUS CONTACTS:
INVESTOR RELATIONS
Karen Troeber
ktroeber@cibus.com
858-450-2636
Jeff Sonnek – ICR
jeff.sonnek@icrinc.com
MEDIA RELATIONS
media@cibus.com
(619) 849-6009
Colin Sanford
colin@bioscribe.com
203-918-4347
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