Westwood Weed Whacker?

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Westwood Weed Whacker?
Crop Caretakers: UCLA Professor Yi Tang (center) with researchers Undramaa Bat-Erdene (left) and Yan Yan (right).

UCLA researchers studying common molds have developed a weed killer they believe could lead to the first new class of commercial herbicides in decades.

The naturally occurring killer microbe was discovered after months of sifting through fungi DNA sequences, with the findings published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature last month.

University officials have reached out to agrochemical companies hoping to find a partner to help develop the herbicide commercially. Researchers believe it can protect crops as weeds become more resistant to commercial herbicides on the market currently.

“We believe we have a strong case,” said Lukasz Kowalik, a life science specialist in business development for UCLA’s Technology Development Group. “I am very excited. This is a completely new class of compounds. It’s natural. It has the potential to enter a $30 billion market by 2025. It could most certainly be a blockbuster.”

But the road to a new herbicide is a long one. The cost of developing a new weed killing product from such a compound can run between $100 million and $300 million, according to Kassim Al-Khatib, director of the Weed Research and Information Center at UC Davis and a weed scientist with 35-years’ experience.

Because the process for developing new products in the space is so expensive, innovation is largely commercialized by such large agrochemical firms as BASF SE, Bayer AG, DowDupont Inc., Syngenta AG and FMC Corp. UCLA – and whatever partner the university picks to help it realize a commercial product – could go head-to-head with these companies’ widely used herbicides, which include glyphosate, commonly known as Roundup.

Another challenge on commercial herbicide development – compared with pharmaceutical drug development – is the price consumers will pay for the end product. Pharma companies can recoup billions in investments through high drug prices, while agrochemical companies’ herbicide price point is limited by commodities markets and the prices farmers can charge for their crops.

That’s a moving target, too.

While UCLA pegged the commercial herbicide market at upwards of $30 billion within a few years, UC Davis’ Al-Khatib pegged it as closer to $5 billion, with a $10 billion global market.

Al-Khatib said there wasn’t enough data to assess the commercial potential of UCLA’s herbicide yet, though he said it was a good idea to find a new tool to manage resistant weeds.

“You can have a good idea, you can have a gene or innovation in the lab, and not be able to convert it into a commercial product,” he said. “But if it’s nonselective, if it works, if it can be delivered, if it can be formulated, if it can be simplified, yes – it could be big.”

Data driven

The new herbicide was developed in a UCLA engineering laboratory a world away from the rows of corn, tomatoes and other foodstuffs it was designed to protect.

Graduate student Yan Yan took a data-driven approach known as genome mining to fashion an algorithm to search through the genes of thousands of fungi. His goal was to discover a microbe immune to the same poison it uses to kill its microscopic enemies.

Months of works led to a resistant molecule that could inhibit an enzyme needed for plants’ survival. Yan hypothesized it could be used in a compound to battle pesky weeds.

Yan and fellow UCLA researchers sprayed it on a common roadside weed as part of a lab test. Plants not modified with the resistance gene from the fungus died, according to the study, while plants imbedded with the resistant gene were immune to the herbicide.

The resistance-gene technology is owned by UCLA and was developed by six researchers at the Westwood campus, three in China and one in Switzerland.

Crops would have to be bred to contain the resistant gene for the herbicide to achieve commercial success.

“What we have found is a combination: we have not only found an herbicide; we have also found an enzyme that can be resistant to our newly discovered herbicide,” said UCLA’s Yi Tang, a principal investigator in the study and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, chemistry and biochemistry. “It’s natural. And in our tests, it’s not toxic to humans.”

Revenue potential

The UCLA research is part of a longstanding effort to examine naturally occurring compounds – particularly those derived from fungi – for commercial use. Chemicals from mushrooms, molds and other fungi underpin nearly three-quarters of all antibiotics and half the anticancer compounds approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Commercial blockbusters include statins – which lower cholesterol – and the antibiotic penicillin.

UCLA believes its genome-mining approach – now made possible by less costly DNA sequencing and advanced data storage – can be used to develop a broad range of biosynthetic drugs and herbicides. The research focus could mean millions of dollars in additional royalties for UCLA.

The university earned $65.7 million from royalty revenue in 2016, while creating 27 commercial startups to capitalize on its inventions.

Tang has already helped founded a biotech startup, Hexagon Bio Inc. of Menlo Park, to search the fungal genome to find a cure for cancer. The firm has raised at least $8 million from investors since it was founded about a year ago.

Kowalik said UCLA will consider whether to form a startup company for its weed killer, potentially funded with aid from the same large commercial agriculture outfits who might license the product.

“This is a way to use a lot of computational power, a clever method, to mine nature,” said UCLA’s Kowalik, a scientist who once worked for the Merck Group. “Nature is full of substances that work.”

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