G+FLAS Life Sciences, a South Korean gene editing company, has announced the transfer of its technique for breeding vitamin D-enriched tomatoes to Bayer AG, a German pharmaceutical and biotech giant. After the technology is developed, G+FLAS Life Sciences will receive royalties from Bayer AG for every sale of vitamin D tomato seeds. Industry estimates suggest annual royalties might reach hundreds of billions of Korean won, but the terms of the particular deal remain unknown.
Bayer and G+FLAS Life Sciences announced that they signed a technology transfer agreement to accelerate the development of gene-edited seeds on May 28. Bayer AG revealed the deal during the World Seed Congress held in Rotterdam, Netherlands. In an open letter, Bayer AG Head of Vegetable R&D said, “Bayer AG uses cutting-edge technology to create a world without hunger, and this collaboration leverages G+FLAS Life Sciences’ gene editing technology with Bayer’s exclusive tomato varieties.”
Vitamin D deficiency can cause weak bones in young people and diabetes, hypertension, and osteoporosis in adults. It affects one billion or so individuals globally. The difficulty in getting vitamin D from tomatoes is that the provitamin D generated in tomatoes rapidly changes to cholesterol.
Using CRISpen gene-editing technology, G+FLAS Life Sciences has blocked tomato provitamin D conversion to cholesterol. CRISPR gene editing is an enzyme complex that can cut and paste desired genes. Researchers effectively eliminated the gene causing provitamin D to be converted to cholesterol in tomatoes.
“We were able to accumulate vitamin D in tomatoes using CRISPR gene editing, making it the only vegetable in the world to contain vitamin D,” said Choe Sung-hwa, CEO of G+FLAS Life Sciences. Vegetarians may significantly benefit from this invention since most vitamin D supplements are made from sheep’s wool fat, some of which comes from highly costly moss. One somewhat cheap and vegetarian-friendly source of vitamin D would be tomatoes.
