New technologies for crop vaccination

Plant Response Biotech (PRB) will collaborate with the Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas UPM-INIA (CBGP) to exploit innovation technologies developed in the Center laboratories for crop vaccination.

The Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) has signed an agreement with Plant Response Biotech, by which the biotechnology company will establish in its Business Park Centro de Empresas in the Montegancedo Campus and will have space available for joint research activities in one of the Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas (CBGP) laboratories. The agreement establishes the basis for the Plant Response Biotech and the CBGP collaboration, with the goal of adding value to the technologies developed by the CBGP researchers as a previous step for their Intellectual Property Protection and commercial exploitation.

Plant Response Biotech is an UPM spin-off founded by the Professor Doctors Antonio Molina Fernández and Pablo Rodríguez Palenzuela, CBGP researchers and full Professors at the UPM. The company was founded with the objective to exploit the inventions developed by these researchers and pretends to commercialize the “Plant Innate Immunity” technology to improve crop protection against pests and disease.

“Plant vaccination” by plant pre- immunization with molecules derived from plant pathogens (elicitors) detected by plant receptors is a natural and robust resistance mechanism that has not been yet exploited in the crop protection field. Plant Response Biotech business mainly focuses in two main complementary research areas: 1) The identification of novel elicitors, in order to use them as inducers in Crop Protection, and 2) The identification and characterization of Receptors and downstream components for Plant Breeding programs to generate resistant varieties in crops of interest.

Plant Response Biotech has the exclusive license for the worldwide exploitation of this technology in several crops. The company partners have wide experience in building bridges between University and Public Research Centers and production companies, where transferring research results from the lab to the market is one of the major objectives. Plant Response Biotech will develop new products and furthermore will license innovation technologies through its network of collaborating companies and customers. To achieve this ambitious business plan the company has undertaken a capital increase with institutional investors in December 2011.

Más información sobre Plant Response Biotech: www.plantresponse.com