Cibus Confirms its Herbicide Tolerance (HT2) Trait Shows Increased Tolerance to a Novel Herbicide for Weed Control in Canola

Rhea-AI Summary

Cibus (NASDAQ: CBUS) announced successful greenhouse testing of its next-generation herbicide tolerance (HT2) trait in Canola, showing increased herbicide tolerance. The company plans to initiate field testing in 2025. This milestone demonstrates Cibus' capability in complex Canola editing and builds upon their previous HT1 and HT3 traits in rice. The HT2 trait is expected to provide farmers with additional herbicide options to combat resistant weeds, potentially reducing the number of herbicide applications needed. Cibus believes this trait can be translated to other crops like Soybean, representing part of their strategy to develop multiple herbicide-tolerant traits across various crops.

Positive

• Successfully demonstrated increased herbicide tolerance in greenhouse testing
• Technology shows potential for application across multiple crops
• Advancement in development pipeline toward 2025 field testing
• Solution addresses growing problem of herbicide-resistant weeds
• Potential to reduce number of required herbicide applications

Negative

• Field testing won't begin until 2025, indicating significant time before commercialization
• Success in greenhouse testing doesn't guarantee field performance

Insights

Agricultural Technology Analyst

The greenhouse success of Cibus's HT2 herbicide tolerance trait represents a significant technical milestone, but with field testing not starting until 2025, commercial impact remains distant. The development demonstrates three key strategic advantages:

• Multi-crop applicability potential, particularly for Canola and Soybean markets
• Novel herbicide resistance mechanism addressing growing weed resistance issues
• Faster development timeline compared to traditional GMO approaches

The market opportunity is substantial - herbicide-tolerant traits are used in 90% of corn and soybean acres across the Americas. However, investors should note that revenue generation through licensing and royalties is still years away, requiring successful field trials and regulatory approvals.

Biotechnology Patent Expert

The advancement of Cibus's RTDS® platform in developing complex edits for herbicide tolerance strengthens their intellectual property portfolio and competitive positioning. The successful demonstration of HT2 trait, alongside HT1 and HT3, creates a valuable IP stack that could generate multiple revenue streams through:

• Cross-crop licensing opportunities
• Trait stacking potential with existing agricultural technologies
• Novel herbicide pairing possibilities

The ability to develop traits more rapidly than traditional methods provides a significant competitive advantage in the $10+ billion seed trait market. However, patent protection duration and potential competition from other gene-editing platforms remain key considerations.

The greenhouse results represent an important success milestone in the development of its second-generation of HT2 edited Canola

Cibus expects to initiate seed bulk up for testing in fields in 2025

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cibus, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBUS), a leading agricultural technology company that develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties, today announced that its next generation edits for herbicide tolerance (HT2) in Canola have shown increased tolerance to the herbicide in greenhouse testing. With the achievement of this milestone, seed from these edited plants will be utilized to initiate larger scale field testing in the 2025 season. Reaching this critical milestone is another demonstration of complex editing in Canola by Cibus leading to improved trait performance.

HT2 represents an advanced multi-crop herbicide resistant trait within Cibus’ pipeline, building upon the Company’s previously reported work in herbicide tolerant traits such as its developed HT1 and HT3 traits in rice. Cibus believes that its HT2 trait will translate to other crops like Soybean. This development of a novel herbicide tolerance solution utilizing Cibus’ HT2 trait is important as many weeds that impact crop production are becoming resistant to widely used conventional herbicides. A new trait such as HT2 for major crops like Canola has the potential to provide farmers with additional herbicide options to address difficult weeds. Growers often require multiple herbicides applied before and after planting of the crop, and traits like HT2 also have the potential to provide improved weed control with fewer herbicide applications.

Greg Gocal, PhD, Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Cibus, stated, “Our latest greenhouse results once again demonstrate how Cibus’ technologies can accelerate the time to make additional complex edits in Canola. Our team’s detailed biochemical understanding of how plants tolerate herbicide has led to this exciting novel result.”

With this milestone, Cibus continues to advance its strategy to provide a family of traits that improve farmer productivity. The objective of Cibus’ weed management platform is to provide farmers with crop seeds that are tolerant to herbicides, including novel herbicides that further enable new weed management solutions for farmers. This need exists especially for crops that do not currently have GMO herbicide tolerant traits. New solutions like those represented by Cibus’ HT2 trait are expected to help address weeds’ resistant to widely used herbicides like glyphosate and for crops that need multiple herbicide solutions. This milestone is an important testament to the ability of Cibus’ Rapid Trait Development System™ (RTDS®) to develop traits in a materially shorter timeframe than conventional breeding or GMO trait development processes and Cibus’ strategy to build an inventory of herbicide tolerant traits for multiple crops.

Rory Riggs, Co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Cibus, commented, “HT2 is expected to be our third trait for herbicide tolerance following our two developed traits HT1 and HT3. Together, they are part of Cibus’ strategy to build a family of gene-edited herbicide tolerant traits that could be used across multiple crops either alone or stacked with other developed traits. Traits that make crops tolerant to the major non-selective herbicides are used in over 90% of corn and soybean acres in North and South America. It is expected that gene edited traits for herbicide tolerance will be a benefit for many crops, including those that did not benefit from these GMO traits. In addition, gene editing provides the opportunity to provide herbicide tolerance traits for new generations of herbicides. Our pipeline of these three traits for herbicide tolerance shows the power of our technology to build a gene-edited weed management platform consisting of multiple gene-edited herbicide tolerant traits.”

About Cibus

Cibus is a leading agricultural technology company that develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties.  Cibus is a leader in the new era of gene-edited trait development, where plant traits (or specific genetic characteristics) that are indistinguishable from traits developed using traditional breeding are now created using gene editing. A key element of Cibus’ technology breakthrough is its patented RTDS^® technology platform: the Trait Machine™-- the industry’s first semi-automated stand-alone trait production facility. Cibus’ Trait Machine™ materially changes the speed, breadth, and scale of trait development. This breakthrough is central to Cibus’ vision for the Future of Breeding: “High Throughput Gene Editing Systems operating as an extension of seed company breeding programs”. The ability to develop complex traits at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional breeding will be critical for addressing the sustainability challenges presented by Climate Change. 

CIBUS CONTACTS:

INVESTOR RELATIONS
Karen Troeber
ktroeber@cibus.com
858-450-2636

Jeff Sonnek – ICR
jeff.sonnek@icrinc.com

MEDIA RELATIONS
media@cibus.com
Colin Sanford
colin@bioscribe.com
203-918-4347

FAQ

What are the results of Cibus (CBUS) HT2 trait greenhouse testing in Canola?

Cibus' HT2 trait showed increased tolerance to herbicides in greenhouse testing, demonstrating successful complex editing in Canola.

When will Cibus (CBUS) begin field testing for its HT2 trait in Canola?

Cibus plans to initiate larger scale field testing of the HT2 trait in Canola during the 2025 season.

What crops can benefit from Cibus (CBUS) HT2 herbicide tolerance trait?

While currently tested in Canola, Cibus believes the HT2 trait can be translated to other crops, particularly Soybean.

How many herbicide tolerance traits has Cibus (CBUS) developed?

Cibus has developed three herbicide tolerance traits: HT1, HT2, and HT3, with HT1 and HT3 previously developed in rice.