Acidophil, LLC is an innovation partnership whose goal is to create and develop technological solutions to areas of high unmet need. Acidophilâ€™s eponymous founders are Nobel Prize winner Sydney Brenner MD, PhD, and Philip Goelet PhD. Acidophilâ€™s team identifies unmet needs, develops or in-licenses enabling intellectual properties, recruits relevant experts, establishes proof of principle, develops commercial plans and participates in bringing its projects to completion through partnering with either corporations or venture capitalists. Current areas of interest include:  The application of biotechnology to the therapy and diagnosis of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and disorders of the central nervous system.  The application of biotechnology to renewable chemistry and environmental remediation.

Acidophil

Syngenta Ventures is the corporate venture capital (VC) team of Syngenta, a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling farmers to make better use of available resources. Created in 2009, Syngenta Ventures was one of the first venture capital teams dedicated to agriculture. With an experienced team of investment professionals possessing more than 45 collective years of VC experience, Syngenta Ventures has established itself as one of the most active and knowledgeable agricultural investors. Syngenta Ventures is stage agnostic, from investing in seed rounds to larger growth equity rounds. They typically invest alongside other financial and corporate VC investors, and they avoid asking for any rights or options for Syngenta as they recognize the importance of having the interests of all shareholders aligned. They use their deep experience as investors and running commercial Ag businesses to work with their portfolio companies to help them maximize their potential value. They often take board or board observer roles, spending the time needed with the company and management to help them achieve their goals. Finally, they are connected into Syngenta, ranging from R&D to commercial teams, around the world. They can help their portfolio companies validate new products in field trials, increase market visibility, and share industry knowledge and contacts. While they encourage technical and/or commercial collaboration with Syngenta, these are negotiated by Syngenta and not connected to their investment. Linked to this, they maintain a strict firewall with Syngenta to protect any confidential information from being shared. They take this responsibility seriously and can provide references from their portfolio companies to demonstrate this.

Syngenta Ventures

RA Capital Management is an investment advisor based in Boston specializing in the life-sciences and drug development sectors. The company's team has been investing since 2002 and is comprised of professionals with training in biology, chemistry, and medicine and also has industry and business development experience at the executive and board levels. The company invests in companies with promising technologies and products.

RA Capital Management

Anterra Capital is an independent growth capital fund.  They invest in fast growing companies that are working to make the global food supply chain safer, more efficient and more sustainable.  Their focus is on supporting the growth of companies who are commercializing novel technologies and services.  They invest across the food supply chain from novel agro inputs and precision farming through to smarter logistics and consumer safety.  They do not invest in other funds, land, operating assets, or other capital intensive businesses. They are a lead investor taking significant minority equity positions and performing an active role on the boards of the companies they support. At the time they invest, their companies typically already generate revenue and have great growth prospects. They target investments of EUR 1M to EUR 15M per company and often support their portfolio companies in raising additional capital from professional investors including from their own financial partners.  Importantly, they are long-term investors.  They focus on working closely with management teams to build lasting value.

Anterra Capital

Alexandria Real Estate Equities is a real estate company. They offer engineering, asset management, laboratory operations, life science, construction, planning, health and environment, safety, project management, finance, collaboration, accounting, communications and public relations, events, venture investment, and sustainability.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

AgriMetis

AgriMetis develops natural product derived compounds to protect crops from weeds, fungal diseases, and insect pests. It features natural product derived compounds to protect crops, recreational land, gardens, and homes from weeds, fungal diseases, and insect pests.  It was founded in 2014 and headquartered in Lutherville Timonium.

<div><p>AgriMetis has successfully divested many of its assets and is no longer an operating company.</p></div>

Enhancing seed and crop traits via biotechnology

Crop Biotech

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    AgriMetis has successfully divested many of its assets and is no longer an operating company.
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<p><span>Lone Star Industrial Materials is a cultivation company that manufactures raw hemp materials. Its product portfolio consists of bast fiber, refined cellulose, and hemp hurd, seeds, hearts, fines and oil. Additionally, it offers retail products such as HempSorb, animal bedding, and hemp control socks. Hemp requires less land, improves nutritional health, is environmentally friendly, helps soil regeneration, grows in various climates, absorbs a great deal of CO2, is a rotational crop and reduces waste. Hemp is used in construction, insulation, bioplastics, and as hemp wood. The privately held company has developed an end-to-end supply chain from seed genetics to delivery.</span></p>

Lone Star Industrial Materials

<p><span>PLANTeDIT operates in the plant genome editing field to produce improved crop species through transformation technology and a CRISPR/Cas9 delivery system. It produces regulatory-free, consumer-oriented, DNA-free and sustainable genome edited crops and biopharmaceuticals. The company’s offering includes non-transgenic high oleic soya, which is produced by mutating the FAD2 gene, which eventually increases the oleic oil content in the soya bean. This product was developed through a collaboration between PLANTeDIT and ToolGen. The organization has also collaborated with RebelBio, University College Cork and IAPB. Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, PLANTeDIT is privately held.</span></p>

PLANTEDIT

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    Amforo is a biotech company that focuses on developing foods that are high in protein by enhancing the nutritional density of food and feed crops through the platform of technologies it has built. The company offers a family of feed and food crops, including primary ingredients for suppliers of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives. In addition, it is focused on developing a low-cost, plant-based source of protein for farmed seafood. Moreover, Amforo is pursuing approaches to enhance the nutritional profile of crops as well as their protein content, which entails optimizing amino acid profiles, modifying carbohydrates, and enhancing micronutrients.
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Amfora

<p><span>BioHeuris provides weed management solutions by combining synthetic biology and gene editing to develop herbicide resistant crops. Its offering includes Heurik, a technology platform that integrates rational design and directed evolution to identify mutations that confer herbicide tolerance, while Swap is the platform that introduces these mutations in crops using gene editing. The company cultivates soybeans, sorghum, rice, cotton, and alfalfa. It has partnered with Santa Rosa Semillas, Adecoagro, Gensus, GDM, Aceleradora Litoral, Tobin, Rotam, Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas, Benson Hill, and Plant Science Center. Headquartered in Rosario, Argentina, BioHeuris is privately held with an office in the US.</span></p>

BioHeuris

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    Tropic Biosciences is a privately held developer of high-performing commercial varieties of tropical crops that promote cultivation efficiencies, improve sustainable environmental practices and enhance consumer health through its use of cutting-edge genetic editing technologies. Its GEiGS Technology combines gene editing and RNAi in a single platform that enables critical disease resistance and quality improvement traits. The technology caters to the banana production, row crops, livestock, and poultry industries. The company’s partners include Temasek, Agronomics, Polaris Founders Capital, and Excellence Through Stewardship. Headquartered in the UK, Tropical Biosciences has been featured in The Telegraph, Nature, Fast Company, and the Financial Times. 
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Tropic Biosciences

Companies that develop or use biological, physical and chemical agents and techniques to provide protection and improve the quality of a seed. This includes the sale of seed coating, or seed enhancement products as methods to treat seeds.

Companies that redesign large clusters of genes and gene parts rather than modifying or engineering a single gene for improving the traits of a plant.

Companies that utilize genetic engineering tools and technologies to use existing and naturally present gene variants in a plant and the natural process of breeding such as inbreeding, and linebreeding to develop better traits for plants.

Companies that use transgenesis processes like tissue culturing to develop transgenic plants or seeds by inserting new genes into them from other plants or in certain instances other organisms like bacteria or even animals.

Companies that offer techniques such as epigenetics, RNA interference (RNAi) to temporarily block a specific gene that would trigger unwanted effect such as a disease on a plant.

Companies that develop a platform to insert, edit, or delete the DNA of a plant itself using approaches such as CRISPR-Cas 9, TALENs, and Zinc Fingers. These approaches help develop plant genes or seeds with traits such as disease-resistant, enhanced-performance, or improve yield.

Biotech solutions to produce crops that are sustainable and offer better traits

Offers customization of genes and traits as required by farmers

Uses AI/machine learning to facilitate their platform/biotech processes like gene editing

AgriMetis

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