• Inari exclusively licensed Promoter Fine Tuning, a genetic diversity creation tool, from the world-renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
  • The technology adds to Inari's plant breeding capabilities and helps its researchers influence plant architecture to improve field performance.

Cambridge, MA (April 16, 2019) - Inari, a company that is advancing plant breeding by tapping nature's genetic diversity, continues to expand its capabilities with exclusive patent licenses to technologies developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).

The technology, Promoter Fine Tuning, helps Inari researchers influence plant architecture and other agricultural traits by managing the extent to which specific existing genes are expressed. This approach — already proven in the field — will initially be used to increase yields and reduce the amount of land required to grow more food.

Zachary Lippman, Ph.D., the CSHL professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator whose team developed the technologies, is a leading expert in plant genetics and a member of Inari's Scientific Strategy Board. With this work, his team has transferred important agricultural research out of the lab and into the field, demonstrating the impact new technologies can have on food crops.

"By licensing these advances to Inari, CSHL is able to take our science and technology to the next level, applying it to products that positively impact the world's food production and reduce pressure on natural resources," says Andrew Whiteley, vice president of Business Development and Technology Transfer.

The CSHL licenses complement technology related to plant epigenetics that Inari recently licensed exclusively from the University of California, Los Angeles. Overall, the agreements expand Inari's toolbox and strengthen its product development process, known as the Seed Foundry™. The company is rapidly developing crops — including corn, soy, wheat and tomato — which will address challenges such as productivity, as well as water- and nitrogen-use efficiency.

"The technologies that we have licensed from CSHL are important in the work we do to address not only the needs of growers, but those of the planet as well," says Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO of Inari. "They enhance our ability to rapidly reintroduce and enhance nature's genetic diversity and provide ways to increase yields, save water and reduce agriculture's pressure on our land and climate."

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory announces exclusive license with plant breeding startup Inari

Cold Spring Harbor, NY (April 16, 2019) - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announced an exclusive licensing agreement with partner Inari, a company that is advancing plant breeding by tapping nature's genetic diversity. The technology developed by CSHL Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zachary Lippman allows Inari to tailor plant architecture and other traits in crops, improving productivity and quality to fit local environmental conditions.

Today, commercial production of major crops, such as soybeans, corn, wheat, and tomato, relies on a handful of standard seed varieties--with limited options for farmers. Inari is applying the Lippman technology to its product development process, which aims to address challenges to our current food system, increasing plant yields as well as water--and nitrogen-use efficiency.

"CSHL identified Inari as an exclusive partner because of its potential to disrupt the market," says CSHL President and CEO Bruce Stillman. "Dr. Lippman's team has already demonstrated the power of basic research in understanding crop yield and this collaboration with Inari applies his research to help farmers deal with changing environmental conditions, water shortages, and threats to arable land."

Lippman first came to CSHL as a Ph.D. student, studying how gene regulation can impact diversity. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he studied how tweaks in gene regulation cause wide variation in traits. In Israel, Lippman and colleagues identified two genes--both of which encode regulators of other genes--that help control the branching of flower-bearing shoots in tomato plants. Recruited back to CSHL as a faculty member, he has studied the architecture and flowering of tomatoes, developing new approaches, including the Promoter Fine Tuning technology, to tailor the genes that control these traits.

Two years in the making, the licensing of Promoter Fine Tuning technology is consistent with CSHL's strategy to pursue innovation in the focus areas of crop improvement, clinical diagnostics, cancer therapeutics and orphan diseases. Standard academic technology transfer strategy considers commercialization when basic research sparks an idea for a marketable technology. "CSHL's approach is more forward-looking, aligned with its historic high-risk/high-reward approach to accelerating innovative research," explained Andrew Whiteley, CSHL Vice President for Business Development and Technology Transfer. "We want to initiate relationships with industry partners while the technology is being shaped and developed at CSHL."

Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2016, Inari seeks a winning food system, with its industry-disrupting Seed Foundry™, a process which taps the natural genetic diversity of plants in the context of climate change and respect for our environment. Inari works with seed companies to co-develop high performance seeds, with innovations directly benefiting farmers. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with development sites in West Lafayette, Indiana, and Ghent, Belgium, Inari has a growing team of over 100 employees. To learn more, visit Inari.com or follow us on Twitter @inari_ag.

Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,100 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. The Meetings & Courses Program annually hosts more than 12,000 scientists. The Laboratory's education arm also includes an academic publishing house, a graduate school and the DNA Learning Center with programs for middle and high school students and teachers. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu.