Agriculture company Corteva entered into a multi-million-dollar joint venture (JV) with biopharmaceutical company Hexagon Bio to develop crop protection products, marking its first collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry.
Launched in 2017, Hexagon Bio uses AI, chemistry, microbial genetics, and synthetic biology to “discover chemical compounds linked to protein targets,” the company explained in a press release.
The JV was made possible by the ag company’s venture arm, Corteva Catalyst, which has partnered with 11 companies — across biologicals, gene-editing, and tech platform companies — since its launch last March, the company shared in a press release.
This news comes nearly two months after Corteva partnered with gene-editing start-up Profluent Bio, which uses AI and biotech to discover new proteins, as AgTechNavigator previously reported.
“This partnership allows us to pursue two critical missions simultaneously: developing transformative therapies for patients and delivering new modes of action for global agriculture. Our platform generates more high-value chemistry than a single development track can absorb, so we are excited to launch this JV for agriculture while continuing our focus on discovery of natural products for human health,” said Maureen Hillenmeyer, CEO and co-founder of Hexagon Bio.
Similarly, Corteva Catalyst is complementing its natural product pipeline, as Hexagon can screen at scale to find new molecules that can be beneficial for agriculture, Tom Greene, senior director and global leader of Corteva Catalyst, told AgTechNavigator.
“As you look at Hexagon, it’s a really nice complement and acceleration to our discovery pipeline. It really expands the opportunity space for natural products. We’ve been historically focused more on the bacterial side. If you look at the Hexagon assets, [they have] world-class fungal libraries,” Greene elaborated.
