🎥Bindbridge taps targeted protein degradation to ‘unlock a new toolbox’ for the crop protection industry

Source: AgFunderNews

The crop protection industry urgently needs new solutions to combat herbicide and insecticide resistance and unlock new modes of action. Targeted protein degradation—which hijacks the internal “waste disposal” systems in pests and weeds to destroy proteins essential to their survival— is being pitched as a potential breakthrough, although it’s still early days.

AgFunderNews ( AFN ) caught up with George Crane, PhD (GC), cofounder and CEO at UK-based startup Bindbridge at World Agri-Tech in San Francisco to discuss how molecular glues—a concept first developed in human medicine—could be the key to developing a viable alternative to glyphosate. First, advances in targeted protein degradation on the pharmaceutical side, where the industry is using this technology to degrade cancer proteins, and also [we’re inspired by] the plant’s own internal cellular homeostasis.

So essentially, we’re identifying molecular glues, small molecule chemistries that are sprayed onto fields like any other [herbicide]. And once uptaken by the plant or pest, we induce proximity between a protein of interest and a protein degrader, typically an E3 ligase, and once proximity is induced, the protein of interest is tagged for degradation by the plant or pest cell.

Why this matters: For operators, the real question is whether the sensing, control, or data layer creates faster and better decisions. The facilities that win are the ones that turn visibility into tighter control and tighter control into better outcomes.

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