Enko announced details on its partnership with Bayer to develop diverse chemistries for crop protection. Applying drug discovery approaches from pharma to crop protection will allow the companies to identify unexpected product candidates that safely target pests in new ways.
Superweeds are a crippling threat to growers worldwide. More than 250 weed species have developed resistance to herbicides designed to control them, and a strict regulatory environment sets a high bar for new products. Climate change is further compounding the problems for growers, opening up more regions to invasive weeds and threatening the resiliency of the food system.
Finding new selective chemistries is an important way to tackle pesticide resistance. This partnership uses Enko’s toolkit of proven pharma technologies — DNA-encoded libraries, machine learning and structural biology — to quickly assess more than 140 billion molecules based on specific target pest enzymes not found in people. The process identifies novel product starting points in new chemical families that haven’t been explored yet, eliminating pests through new pathways and combating resistance. The resulting molecules bind with the target pest like a lock and key, which means they are more effective in lower quantities and don’t interact with the surrounding environment. Farmers can apply less product, less often.
“There’s a vast chemical universe that can help growers with the urgent crop threats they’re facing — those molecules are just waiting to be found,” said Enko CEO Jacqueline Heard. “Borrowing from and building upon pharma innovations can help the agriculture industry solve these problems faster while building in safety guardrails from the start. Bayer has understood the synergies between these two industries for decades and is the right partner to accelerate our technology expertise.”