Berkeley Lights and Bayer announce a multi-year agreement aimed at revolutionizing the discovery of next-generation traits

Berkeley Lights, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLI) a leader in the functional characterization of live biology, announced a multi-year agreement with Bayer to develop and perform high-throughput functional screening workflows aimed at accelerating and expanding the discovery of novel traits. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Berkeley Lights will leverage its platform to screen individual variants of bioactives for Bayer in a massively high-throughput manner. The outcome will be a significant acceleration of the agricultural leader’s pipeline for discovery and development of novel traits. This agreement marks the first application of Berkeley Lights’ technology for use in the agricultural sector.

“After evaluating the technology landscape, it became clear that the Berkeley Lights Platform is uniquely positioned to enable Bayer Crop Science to deliver on our commitment for world-class innovation and standards in sustainability for farmers, consumers and the environment,” said Brianna White, Head of Trait Design and Science for Bayer. “Our agreement with Berkeley Lights to develop and perform high-throughput functional screening workflows will enable us to accelerate and expand our trait discovery program.”

“We are excited to support Bayer in the discovery and development of novel traits,” said Eric Hobbs, PhD, chief executive officer of Berkeley Lights. “This agreement is an example of Berkeley Lights executing on our commitment to deploy our technologies into new, large market segments. Our proprietary approach to high-throughput functional screening is applicable to a variety of sectors and applications even beyond agriculture, including antibody, therapeutic protein, and enzyme engineering for pharmaceutical, life science, and industrial products.”

About Berkeley Lights

Berkeley Lights is a leading digital cell biology company focused on enabling and accelerating the rapid development and commercialization of biotherapeutics and other cell-based products for our customers. The Berkeley Lights Platform captures deep phenotypic, functional, and genotypic information for thousands of single cells in parallel and can also deliver the live biology customers desire in the form of the best cells. Our platform is a fully integrated, end-to-end solution, comprising proprietary consumables, including our OptoSelect™ chips and reagent kits, advanced automation systems, and application software. We developed the Berkeley Lights Platform to provide the most advanced environment for rapid functional characterization of single cells at scale, the goal of which is to establish an industry standard for our customers throughout their cell-based product value chain.