Israeli startup CanBreed said it has reached a licensing agreement to use gene editing tools to provide cannabis growers with enhanced seeds for the production of medical grade cannabis.
The Givat Chen, Israel-based firm, founded in 2017 by Ido Margalit and Tal Sherman, said it has received a nonexclusive intellectual property licensing agreement to use CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology from Corteva Agriscience and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which hold the rights to the technology.
CanBreed has developed what it says are “stable” cannabis seeds that will allow farmers to grow cannabis from seeds as opposed to cloning, as it is done now, from branches of the plant that are rooted.
“The cloning of the branches help maintain the uniformity of DNA of the weed,” but as the plant grows, the genes could be expressed differently from those of the mother plant, explained Margalit, who also serves as CEO of the startup.
Read more at timesofisrael.com