CEO of Moa, Virginia Corless, highlighted the importance of the collaboration:
Biomar's collaboration partnership with Moa is an important addition to our cutting-edge capabilities," says Virginia Corless, CEO of Moa Technology. "We believe that the ocean biome is an area of great potential for herbicide discovery, with millions of diverse and unique natural compounds that could help us deliver greater food security on land.
Moa now has access to Biomar's library of natural marine compounds to discover new herbicides and screen the compounds using its GALAXY platform to find those that have the potential to help farmers protect their harvests from herbicide-resistant weeds.
Xavier Jacq, Moa's Chief Scientific Officer, commented:
Biomar has a tremendous expertise and longstanding experience in natural product identification and production. The Biomar team is highly competent and with a strong scientific background.
Oxford University spinout Moa Technologies started its venture as one of the first tenants at the BioEscalator. They now employ more than 80 staff and is backed by leading agritech and life science venture capital firms. The company's focus is developing new and more sustainable ways to help ensure global food security.