Leading agri-biotech firm Micropep technologies announced that it has raised EUR8.5 million (USD10 million) in Series A funding round led by Supernova Invest along with FMC Venture.
The funds will be utilized not only for development of proprietary discovery platform but also for disease control and weed suppression.
France-based Micropep, which was spun out from Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), provides an innovative discovery platform for the development of novel peptide-based biological products for farming.
“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,” said Thomas Laurent, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, adding peptides and small proteins are of paramount importance for sustainable crop protection solutions.
Romain Sautrau, Investment Director at Supernova Invest, termed Micropep’s advanced technology as a way to disrupt future agriculture. While Amar Singh, FMC Ventures MD noted Micropep’s pioneering technology can enhance plant traits without altering plant DNA.
Founded in 2016, Micropep identifies as well as enhances the expression of naturally occurring regulatory peptides (miPEPs) that can temporarily regulate the expression of microRNAs of plants and their targeted genes, thereby conferring resistance to pathogens.