July 2, 2019

By Michelle Pelletier Marshall, GAI Media

Trailhead Capital of Boulder, Colorado, has been on a mission to expand its agribusiness and land portfolio over the last year. In August 2018, the privately-held alternative investment company had a part in a $6.5 million funding round for Telesense, a grain monitoring and IoT startup based in Sunnyale, California. In September, Trailhead invested in Mexican-based produce company D&T Organics. The following month, Trailhead provided capital for Agricola ARA, S.A.S, based in Medellin, Colombia, in an effort to continue expanding the portfolio’s specialty production agriculture allocation. Then, just two months ago, Minnesota-based MNPHARM was on the radar of Trailhead, where they invested $200,000 to help the company expand its robust human and animal health pipeline.

MNPHARM, established in 2015, uses plants to manufacture human and animal proteins needed for therapeutic research and treatment. It combines technological advances in plant microbial genetic engineering with protein purification and controlled indoor agriculture to produce recombinant proteins using proprietary, plant-based, expression methods. The company has combined science and technology to increase efficiency and lower the costs of protein production, something MNPHARM’s co-founders Jeff Reinert and Dave Roeser have been involved in since 2011.

Mastering the intricacies of genetic engineering combined with molecular farming will eventually provide personalized treatments for certain diseases, such as cancer, and develop vaccines in one-tenth of the time and at less than half the cost. MNPHARM is exploring new possibilities for their one-of-a-kind protein synthesis, including those in the agriculture sector.

Join us as we chat with Reinert and Roeser to get a better understanding of the mission of the company and the opportunity for investment.

1.) Please explain how your experience with indoor farming played a role in you becoming visionaries in the world of molecular farming.

After spending many years developing proprietary indoor growing equipment and methods, we wanted to use our resources to achieve a higher value outcome. Utilizing recent advancements in plant genetic engineering allowed us to create a much safer protein manufacturing process that lowers cost and increases production.

2.) Your process is similar to genetically modifying food crops to become, for example, drought-resistant or more nutritious. Can you please explain the process?

Using genetic engineering, MNPHARM infiltrates a specific strain of tobacco plant with an agrobacterium causing the plant to express our protein of target in just 7 days. We then extract the protein from the plant and purify it. The entire process takes only 12 days.

Recent advancements allow for accelerated plant genetic engineering in many areas. Genetically modifying food crops once took years to develop but can now be developed in a fraction of the time.

Future opportunities due to advances in plant microbial genetic engineering and using our plant-based production method include human health, animal health, genetically modifying food crops, and production of bio enzymes. 

3.) How does your plant-based expression method, using tobacco plants as hosts, vary from traditional methods and what are the advantages?

Traditional protein production methods use animal-derived materials and can take two to six months to complete the protein production process. Issues include risk of microbial contamination due to the presence of bacteria in the animal-derived materials, and a process that takes two to six months and is very expensive.

MNPHARM’s plant-based method is Animal Component Free (ACF). No endotoxins, prions, or virons to risk microbial contamination, which makes our products much safer. Also, our production process takes only 12 days. MNPHARM can sell proteins for hundreds of dollars versus what typically would cost thousands of dollars.

4.) MNPHARM is one of the few companies to have the new designation as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). Please tell us more about this and the accompanying benefits.

Our company is definitely focused on making a profit but registering as a Public Benefit Company allows MNPHARM to use some of its profits to pursue areas of interest like small batch production of orphan drugs. These drugs typically remain commercially undeveloped due to limited potential for profitability. We believe our production methods can make a big difference in this area and make them profitable.

5.) What applications in the ag sector are you exploring for your technology?

Our first “ag sector” program is focused on animal health. We have successfully produced a coat protein that invokes an immune response for a condition found in pigs known as Lawsonia Intracellularis. Prior efforts using traditional methods have succeeded in producing small amounts of this protein, but the issue has been the ability to scale production. We believe using our production method, MNPHARM will be able to scale production and make this needed protein commercially viable.

Another ag-related interest for our company is rapid response. When an animal health outbreak occurs, MNPHARM’s fast production times can assist in getting supply to where it is needed much faster and less expensive.

6.) The recent Trailhead investment will help MNPHARM build new commercial trials and relationships in the animal health space, and facilitate expansion into new domestic and international markets. Are you on track with these goals, and what are other investment opportunities that exist with MNPHARM?

We are using the current investment to broaden our development footprint in our labs and to become cGMP compliant. Progress has increased in just the last couple months since we have added additional personnel. In the month of June, we expressed three new proteins and have many more in the pipeline that we are working to produce.

Additional investment opportunities do exist with MNPHARM. Very soon we will need investment dollars to purchase the larger processing and purification equipment needed to scale up our production and increase revenue.

For more information about our company or to contact us, go to www.MNPHARM.com.

– Michelle Pelletier Marshall is managing editor for Global AgInvesting’s quarterly GAI Gazette magazine and a regular contributor to GAI News. She can be reached at mmarshall@globalaginvesting.com.