Dow AgroSciences announces license agreement with Critical Path Services

Dow AgroSciences and Critical Path Services recently announced a license agreement granting Critical Path Services a non-exclusive license to Dow AgroSciences’ patented (U.S. 8,227,252) intellectual property that includes a high throughput method for detecting multiple proteins in plants using mass spectroscopy.

As agricultural innovation continues to accelerate around the world, there is a growing need among both agricultural companies, contract research organizations, public research organizations, and government regulators to more efficiently identify proteins in plant samples both naturally occurring and from trait introgression.

To meet the growing need, Dow AgroSciences has invented a more efficient, high throughput method using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectroscopy (LC/MS/MS) to multiplex the measurement of increasing numbers of proteins in plants of interest to companies and government regulators. This cutting-edge technology referred to as Plextein™, is being licensed to Critical Path Services in a non-exclusive agreement.

“Plextein has the potential to accelerate the discovery and development of novel plant traits by simplifying the analysis of complex samples which ultimately benefits farmers with new products,” said Tom Meade, Dow AgroSciences Global Seeds Discovery Leader. “Our intent to broadly license this high throughput solution reflects our commitment to sharing the benefits of our innovation with third parties, including contract research and service companies such as Critical Path Services.”

“LC/MS/MS is a very powerful tool for protein quantitation in situations where an ELISA approach is not viable,” stated Julie Eble, President and CEO of Critical Path Services. “With access to Dow AgroSciences’ Plextein technology, we can address multiple proteins in a single run for clients facing this common situation. We expect this will move the science and the products of agricultural biotechnology ahead more quickly as well as more efficiently.”