FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC), a leading global agricultural sciences company, and Micropep Technologies (Micropep), a global leader in micropeptide technology, today announced a strategic collaboration to develop biological solutions to control destructive herbicide-resistant weeds that reduce crop yields.  

The collaboration will accelerate the ongoing development of natural weed control products based on short protein molecules naturally produced by plant cells. Under an exclusive multi-year agreement, the partnership will focus on developing new solutions for controlling key herbicide-resistant weeds in corn and soybeans. The companies will combine their respective R&D capabilities leveraging Micropep’s technology to expedite and improve the success rate in identifying innovative biological herbicides. 

“We are pleased to collaborate with Micropep in developing novel micropeptide technology to address resistance management,” said Dr. Kathleen Shelton, FMC executive vice president and chief technology officer. “These novel mode-of-action biomolecules in agriculture represent an exciting new frontier; this is a completely new solution compared to what is available to growers today. This agreement demonstrates our continuing commitment to diversify FMC’s world-class R&D pipeline to include a broader portfolio of biologicals that work in combination with synthetics.”

The global herbicide market was over $26 billion in 2021, composed primarily of synthetic herbicides. There are significant market opportunities for bioherbicides that provide effective weed control while also minimizing the impact on the environment. This collaboration advances the development of Micropep’s micropeptide pipeline, which has demonstrated efficacy on resistant weeds and pathogens threatening major crops throughout the world. To address agriculture’s most pressing challenges, FMC is investing in the discovery and development of new modes of action and continues to build an extensive ecosystem of partners to accelerate the speed of crop protection innovation.

“Micropep is building the next generation of natural solutions addressing global challenges in multiple markets, and agriculture is a key focal area. Climate change is already impacting the way farmers produce food, and they urgently need new sustainable solutions to protect their crops,” said Thomas Laurent, Micropep founder and chief executive officer. “This partnership with FMC will expedite the availability of more sustainable solutions. By combining our proprietary AI-powered micropeptide discovery platform and FMC’s strong scientific and commercial capabilities, we seek to develop a selective natural herbicide effective in controlling major resistant weeds.”

Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

About FMC

FMC Corporation is a global agricultural sciences company dedicated to helping growers produce food, feed, fiber and fuel for an expanding world population while adapting to a changing environment. FMC’s innovative crop protection solutions – including biologicals, crop nutrition, digital and precision agriculture – enable growers, crop advisers and turf and pest management professionals to address their toughest challenges economically while protecting the environment. With approximately 6,400 employees at more than 100 sites worldwide, FMC is committed to discovering new herbicide, insecticide and fungicide active ingredients, product formulations and pioneering technologies that are consistently better for the planet. Visit fmc.com to learn more and follow us on LinkedIn® and Twitter®.

About Micropep Technologies

Micropep Technologies, with operations in the US and France, is a global leader in breakthrough micropeptide technology. The company has developed a proprietary AI-powered discovery platform for micropeptides, which are short protein molecules naturally produced by plant cells and have an infinite number of applications. Micropep is building the next generation of natural solutions addressing global challenges in multiple markets, with a key focus in agriculture.

Statement under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:  This release contains forward-looking statements, which are based on management’s current views and assumptions regarding future events, future business conditions and the outlook for the company based on currently available information. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by any forward-looking statement. These factors include, among other things, the risk factors and other cautionary statements included within FMC’s 2021 Form 10-K filed with the SEC as well as other SEC filings and public communications. FMC cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the above cautionary statement. FMC undertakes no obligation, and specifically disclaims any duty, to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after the date on which they were made, except as otherwise required by law.

SOURCE FMC Corporation

Micropep, an ag-biotech company developing revolutionary biological micropeptide-based solutions for agriculture, announces the completion of an additional €8.75 million tranche in their Series A financing, bringing the total round to €17.25 million.

Fall Line Capital led this new funding in addition to existing investors, Supernova Invest, Sofinnova Partners, FMC Ventures and IRDI/SORIDEC.

Based in Toulouse, France’s center for AgTech development, Micropep has developed a unique technological platform that makes it possible to precisely regulate a plant’s gene expression, without altering its DNA, by the exogenous application of micropeptides, a family of proteins naturally produced by plants to respond to stress and regulate their development.

International Ambitions: Accelerating development in the United States

The new round of financing will fuel Micropep’s expansion to the United States, making US-based venture fund, Fall Line Capital, a perfect partner. Fall Line Capital is known for its commitment to sustainable agriculture through its strategic investments in both U.S. farmland and innovative AgTech companies. This renowned fund brings added value to Micropep’s evolution, thanks to its expertise in the technological field and concrete knowledge of agronomic issues.

“Micropep has developed a truly novel technology platform in ag-biotech that promises to bring farmers highly effective new and environmentally safe crop protection solutions. We have been impressed by the broad potential of Micropep’s micropeptide discovery platform and by the vision of its leadership team. We are eager to provide our expertise to support the company and its expansion in the US,” said Eric O’Brien, co-founder and Managing Partner of Fall Line Capital.

Tomorrow’s Transitions: from research to market adoption

This new investment also marks the first step towards the commercialization of Micropep’s products. Micropep is using this funding to accelerate the development phase of its first micropeptide candidates in the United States and will build a locally-recruited team to deploy its solutions.

“We are extremely happy to welcome Fall Line Capital onboard. Their unparalleled experience in both farm and tech investments will help accelerate the development of our first micropeptide candidates for the US market. Like everywhere else in the world, US farmers will need all the tools they can access to continue to control resistant weeds and pathogens while mitigating the effects of climate change on their crops. Micropep is building for them a revolutionary toolbox of micropeptide- based solutions to first control resistant weeds and diseases. Our unique approach could open new frontiers in crop protection the same way RNA technology did with vaccines.” said Thomas Laurent, co-founder and CEO of Micropep.

Based in Toulouse, France, Micropep was spun out from Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Toulouse University in 2016, a centre of excellence for AgriTech. The company has developed a proprietary technology to precisely enhance plant traits without altering DNA by spraying “miPEPs”, a unique family of natural peptides regulating plant microRNAs.

miPEPs will influence all plant phenotypes regulated by microRNAs including, germination, early growth, disease resistance and flowering. Leveraging the potential of these natural peptides, the company is now developing a pipeline of “sprayable traits” biosolutions to control resistant weeds such as Palmer Amaranth and protect plants against major diseases, primarily targeting the $28 billion American and European herbicides and fungicides markets.

Romain Sautrau, Investment Director at Supernova Invest will join the Board of Directors and Sara Olson, Principal at FMC Ventures, along with Jean-Michel Petit, Investment Director at IRDI Capital Investissement will be joining as Observers to the Board.

“In an industry that has been challenged by a shrinking discovery pipeline, active ingredients that are slowly being phased out and increased pest and weeds resistance to chemicals, our technology provides a ground-breaking alternative. Peptides and small proteins have a great potential for sustainable crop protection solutions and Micropep is proud to lead the field in this area. Using our proprietary discovery platform we can improve plant health naturally, using the plant’s own mechanisms, identifying novel and safe active ingredients with a100x better hit rate compared with conventional methods. This financing will allow us to begin field testing of our promising compounds, the next milestone in commercialising our product.”

Thomas Laurent – MicroPEP CEO

“Micropep’s cutting edge technology has the potential to disrupt tomorrow’s agriculture. As a committed investor in promising deeptech companies, we look forward to leveraging our extensive experience in AgriTech to back Thomas and his best-in-class platform in order to build a new market leader.”

Romain Sautrau, Investment Director at Supernova Invest

“We are delighted to see the progress at Micropep, a company where Sofinnova was the first investor. We look forward to working with this talented team and group of renowned investors as Micropep continues to validate and scale up its exciting technology targeting disease control and weed suppression.”

Denis Lucquin, Partner and Senior Advisor at Sofinnova Partners

“Micropep’s pioneering technology can enhance plant traits without altering plant DNA and circumvents the challenges of GMOs and costs of RNAi. This novel approach has the potential to develop first-in-class biological ‘traits’ – a game changer set against a landscape of regulatory headwinds, emerging resistance, and a global push for sustainable crop protection technologies.”

Amar Singh, Managing Director of FMC Ventures

“The success of the latest fundraising round confirms the confidence of our world-class syndicate of investors in Micropep’s exceptional potential to radically transform agriculture with unique and differentiated biosolutions which will contribute to satisfying consumer demand for improved food safety.”

Kevin Smith, Chairman of the Board of MicroPEP Directors

Micropep Technologies, an AgTech startup addressing future agriculture needs by discovering novel natural molecules helping plants to unleash their full potential, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Mikael Courbot, a leading executive in Ag-biotechnology research, as Chief Technical Officer.

Thomas Laurent, CEO of Micropep Technologies said: “ We are pleased to welcome Mikael into our team: his strong scientific and technical expertise as well as his natural leadership skills will definitely help us accelerate the development of our disruptive technology. We are building a unique and powerful discovery engine that will enable us to rapidly identify bioactive peptides for application in agriculture. By enhancing the natural capabilities of plants, our molecules will help farmers protect their crops against biotic and abiotic stresses in the context of climate change, ultimately improving yields. Mikael is the last key recruitment we had in sight for this first phase of our company’s organization, and I am very proud of the amazing team and board members we brought together in less than a year following our €4m seed round led by Sofinnova Partners.”

Mikael Courbot said: “ I am very excited about joining Micropep. I have known Thomas from the very beginning of the Micropep story in 2015, even before the company got incorporated. At that time, I was already thrilled by the potential of the disruptive scientific discovery made by Micropep co-founder Jean-Philippe Combier at CNRS. Today, I am really impressed by the amazing data that are coming through and by the team they put together. I am really excited by this unique opportunity to build a company that could be a game changer for the agronomic industry”.

Mikael joined Micropep Technologies from the Manchester based start-up, RedAg Crop Protection (now Globachem Discovery Ltd), where he spent two and half years building the Biology department. Prior to this Mikael worked for the multi-national agribusiness Syngenta, where he spent almost nine years working across R&D sites in Switzerland and England, leading scientific teams in researching and developing new molecules for both biotic and abiotic stress. Mikael Courbot holds a PhD from the Université Henri Poincaré in Nancy, France, on Plant Biology & Genetics, focusing on ectomycorrhizal fungi and metal transport and homeostasis.

He will serve on the Board alongside 3 additional former CEOs from well-known plant biotechnology companies: Alain Godard, Eric Rey and Luc Mathis. Following the capital investment of 4 million euros by Sofinnova Partners and Irdi Soridec Gestion in March 2018, Micropep strengthened by 4 international experts has created the best possible conditions for success.

Kevin is a hands-on multicultural leader with a proven and strong track record in building highly profitable businesses by developing, communicating and aligning multicultural teams around a vision and executing profitable customer solutions growth strategies. Between 2008 and 2014, he led Arysta Lifescience European and EAM businesses as regional CEO, where he doubled profits while building Arysta’s global biologicals solutions portfolio. He is currently Senior Vice President at Houghton International, world number 1 in metalworking fluids. As a world-renowned expert with more than 30 years of experience in management and coaching of executive teams, his role is to fast-track the development of Micropep Technologies.

Alongside Kevin’s nomination, the company appointed three other independent board members with incomparable hands-on experience in the Agricultural Biotechnology sector: Alain Godard, former CEO of Aventis CropScience (acquired by Bayer), Eric Rey, former CEO of Arcadia Bioscience (NASDAQ:RKDA) – a leading company of agricultural traits for heathier products -, and Luc Mathis, former CEO of Calyxt (NASDAQ:CLXT) – a leading company in gene editing for agriculture. Their complementary skills and experience in both plant genetics and crop protection as well as their significative international track-record will support Micropep’s ambition to quickly emerge as a global leading biotechnology company in the agricultural sector. Micropep’s Board of Directors is further composed of Thomas Laurent, co-founder and CEO, and of the representatives of Sofinnova Partners (Denis Lucquin) and Irdi Soridec (Jean-Michel Petit), the two main investors.

Micropep is developing crop enhancement products using micro-RNA or miRNA — a small RNA molecule hat DNA uses to communicate what proteins to build.

Micropep is identifying and harnessing miRNA-encoded peptides (micropeptides), which are proteins produced by plants to regulate the expression of genes critical to plant development, without changing the underlying DNA. Each micropeptide makes it possible to target a specific family of genes in a given plant species. Micropeptides can be used to speed up or slow down germination, increase plant’s resistance to diseases or even accelerate flowering.

One of the company’s first research efforts is to identify corn-specific micropeptides that will improve corn germination without having any effects on nearby weeds.

Micropep’s technology was discovered by cofounder Jean-Phillippe Combier at the Plant Science Research Laboratory (LRSV) in France and initially funded and supported by the city of Toulouse’s Tech Transfer (TTT) company before being transferred to and developed by Micropep Technologies.

Micropep’s products will either be produced chemically or through a biological production method. (Peptides are already commonplace in pharmaceuticals, so production at scale is not likely to be a major barrier.)

Micropep’s first product, which CEO Thomas Laurent says is likely five years away, will be a seed coating. Crop protection sprays are also a target for Micropep since the miRNA peptides can be made to affect just one species, meaning it could inhibit the growth of specific weeds while leaving crops unaffected.

Laurent said that his technology is preferable to many of the biological crop inputs on the market today because the mechanism is fully understood.

“We have an approach that is a bit different than the microbiome space. In that space the mode of action of the molecule is not always understood. We understand the genetics and role of microRNA and then on this knowledge we design peptides,” said Laurent.

The company is currently partnering with a Spanish seed maker in order to develop and test initial products.