Investment in UK biotech startup, Resurrect Bio, to develop disease resistant crops

Resurrect Bio, a biotechnology startup on a mission to revolutionize the agricultural industry by giving crops the genetic tools to defend themselves against disease,  announced the completion of their seed investment round which totals at £1.61M. The investment was led by SynBioVen, and also included UKI2S, AgFunder and SHAKE Climate Change Accelerator.

Resurrect Bio is a spin out company of The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.  It is building a platform that leverages gene editing techniques to fix the innate immune system of crops and make crops more resistant to disease, which is critical if we want to reduce the use of agrichemicals while feeding an increasing world population.

Resurrect Bio uses the latest scientific discoveries, combining a unique blend of computational biology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and synthetic biology methods to rapidly identify and resurrect native disease resistance genes in crops. With this new investment, Resurrect Bio will accelerate product development and strengthen its underlying disease resistance trait-discovery platform.

The company partners with key members of the seed industry to enable the rapid delivery of  gene-edited disease-resistant seeds so that farmers will be provided with the option to enhance their crop yield and reduce the dependence on agrichemicals.

Recently the Precision Breeding Act, received royal assent and it is anticipated that gene edited crops will become much more accessible in England.

"Resurrect Bio is thrilled to have secured this investment from such a strong group of partners who share our vision of delivering disease-resistant crops to farmers," said Dr. Cian Duggan, CEO of Resurrect Bio. "This funding will enable us to accelerate our mission and make significant strides towards more sustainable agriculture."

"We're very excited to partner with the Resurrect Bio team, as their unique technology not only reduces the use of agrichemicals, but it also helps increase crop yields and thereby contributes to addressing the growing food security issues the world is facing," said Antoine Pechin from SynBioVen.

"Oliver Sexton, Investment Director UKI2S commented: 'the fund backs world changing technology at an early stage and Resurrect Bio is a great example of that ambition. Its platform will lead to reduced pesticide use and UKI2S is delighted to help Cian and the team build their technology'.