August 7, 2003

By Barb Abney

A company founded on innovations in biotechnology at the University of Central Florida has secured venture funding to research the possibility of growing therapeutic drugs in common plants like tobacco.

Chlorogen Inc. uses chloroplast technology, new to the plant biotech industry, to greatly increase the protein output of plants, which could yield a cost-effective supply of proteins for therapeutic uses. And, because chloroplast DNA is not inherited through pollen, Chlorogen’s technology can prevent foreign genes from being transferred to other crops through pollen.

Investors include representatives of four leading venture capital companies: Burrill & Company of San Francisco; Redmont Venture Partners of Birmingham, Ala.; Prolog Ventures of St. Louis; and Harris & Harris Group Inc. of New York. UCF is providing the research and maintaining an equity share in the company, which is based in St. Louis.

Henry Daniell, one of the founders of Chlorogen and professor of Molecular and Microbiology and Trustee chair at UCF ( http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~daniell ), will lead the research efforts, building on his groundbreaking methods of growing drugs such as interferon in tobacco leaves.

Daniell with some of the researchers in his busy lab in the Biology Building.

"Tobacco is the fruit fly of plant research," Daniell says. Because of tobacco’s prolific tendencies (a million seeds per plant) and its quick maturation (three months) it holds the potential to rapidly and inexpensively host a variety of human protein medicines, including interferon, insulin and human serum albumin and vaccines for anthrax, plague and cholera. Daniell points out that "it costs about $26,000 per Hepatitis C patient for interferon therapy (of a few months’ duration). However, the daily income of one-third of the world’s population is less than a dollar. There are over 800 million patients currently
infected with Hepatitis C around the world. Thus, human therapeutic proteins are not currently available to a large population of the world. Therefore, agricultural production of pharmaceutical proteins is necessary to meet current and growing needs."

Chlorogen has an exclusive license for a technology patented by Daniell that precisely inserts a foreign gene or genes into small disk-shaped structures in plant cells known as "chloroplasts." The foreign gene becomes incorporated into the chloroplast’s own DNA, allowing the growth of new plants with genetically identical cell structures.

Daniell says chloroplast genetic engineering offers several advantages over other forms of plant genetic
engineering:

The technology is environmentally friendly. The foreign genetic material is totally contained in the
chloroplast and is not transferred to the pollen, eliminating concerns about the transfer of introduced genes through pollen.

Genetic modification of chloroplasts permits the introduction of thousands of copies of foreign
genes per plant cell, and generates extraordinarily high levels of foreign proteins.

Crop plants with genetically modified chloroplasts are relatively easy to grow on a large scale and
provide a low-cost method of producing high-value proteins.

Because chloroplast greatly increases the protein output of plants, the technology could yield a cost-effective supply of proteins for therapeutic uses. Chlorogen’s patented technology enables the plant to produce up to 1,000 times more introduced protein than other available technologies.

Chlorogen’s first product will be human serum albumin, a protein with many clinical uses, including blood volume replacement during shock and treatment of severe burns. Albumin is currently obtained from plasma and is costly to use. Production of the protein using chloroplast genetic engineering eliminates the risk of disease transmission associated with blood products, and reduces the costs of use.

Chloroplast genetic engineering has also been used successfully to produce valuable peptides and
monoclonal antibodies, and to create plants that are resistant to herbicides, insects, disease, salt, drought and toxic metals like mercury. In addition, vaccines and therapeutic proteins are now developed at UCF in carrots for oral delivery, which should dramatically reduce their production, purification, storage and transportation costs.

"The fact that UCF technology was singled out for this investment speaks very highly of the impact of research conducted here," said M.J. Soileau, UCF vice president for research.

Brian Clevinger, managing director of Prolog Ventures, predicts that Chlorogen’s technology will make the company a major player in the biotechnology industry. "The company’s ability to vastly increase per-plant protein production levels in an environmentally sound way gives it a unique position in the marketplace. This bodes well for its product pipeline."

"Opportunities for research and development in the area of biotechnology are both limitless and awe-inspiring, holding tremendous promise for enhancing the quality of life," said Belinda McCarthy, dean of UCF’s College of Health and Public Affairs.

The potential economic impact of biotechnology in Central Florida is immense, said Pappachan
Kolattukudy, director of UCF’s expanding Biomolecular Science Center.

"The successful first round of fund-raising, even in this difficult economic situation, is a testimony to the potential of this technology," he said. "The research on this technology being conducted at UCF will be funded by this corporation and the future developments in this technology will certainly have more direct impacts on the economy of this region."

Chlorogen will partner with pharmaceutical companies in developing its therapeutic proteins and is also pursuing licensing agreements with developers of agronomic, nutritional and industrial proteins.

Having successfully expressed proteins in the chloroplasts of tobacco and other crops, Chlorogen will
now focus on developing an economical method to extract the proteins for pharmaceutical use.
Longer-term, Chlorogen plans to license its technology to improve agricultural products, such as
insect-protected and herbicide-tolerant crops. 

Chlorogen has many potential products in its pipeline. These include proteins to fight cancer, liver diseases and diabetes, for use as a blood-extending agent and to produce a vaccine against the bioterrorism agents anthrax and plague. The company already has expressed these proteins in transformed seeds ready for scale-up.

The Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, a biotechnology incubator in St. Louis, will be headquarters for Chlorogen, whose scientists will conduct research in the center’s state-of-the-art laboratories. Chlorogen also will collaborate with scientists at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.