February 22, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Elo Life Systems was spun out of biotech company Precision BioSciences in late 2021. 

At the time, Michael Amoroso, CEO of Precision BioSciences, commented, “Elo is now a separate food and agriculture business, with independent financial resources and focused core capabilities to support its essential mission to improve human health and wellness through food.” 

Realizing that new tools and different approaches are needed if we’re going to solve today’s greatest challenges facing our food system, this rather new molecular farming company is able to take advantage of a plant’s ability to be a “biofactory” that naturally mass produces different substances. 

By leveraging bioengineering to modify the genes of a plant, Elo Life Systems is able to make plants produce specific, useful things. Currently, the startup is working on two projects: one centered on monk fruit sweeteners, and a second in partnership with Dole to make Cavendish bananas that can resist  Fusarium TR4 – a soil-borne, pathogenic fungus that is decimating banana plantations on a global scale. 

“Spread of Fusarium wilt would not only have devastating consequences to the banana industry, but also have a significant economic impact on farmers in the affected regions whose livelihoods depend on exports of the Cavendish banana,” said Fayaz Khazi, Ph.D., who was CEO of Elo Life Systems in August 2020. 

This Series A will be used by the company to address another serious issue – to develop a new natural sweetener in plants bioengineered with genetic information taken from the monk fruit – a fruit native to China called luo han guo, or Buddha fruit, that is 150-250 times sweeter than sugar, has zero calories, and is safe for people with certain health conditions, like diabetes. Although it contains natural sugars in the form of fructose and glucose, the monk fruit gets its sweetness from novel antioxidants called mogrosides.

However, sourcing monk fruit from China is a challenge, and processing monk fruit sweeteners is difficult, making it expensive and not practical for widespread use in the production of foods and beverages. But Elo Life Systems is looking to create a unique way to provide a cost-effective and constant supply. 

Led by existing investors including AccelR8, Novo Holdings, and DCVC Bio, the funds gained through this Series A will support this goal by allowing the company to move forward with U.S. regulatory approvals, building pilot-scale processing capabilities, and for market testing the sweetener.

Todd Rands, current CEO of Elo Life Systems, noted that the company has seen significant growth of approximately 60 percent over the past year, adding that it has signed a lease and doubled its office and lab space, opening up the possibilities of what the team can accomplish. 

Initially, Elo Life was editing the genetic codes that give monk fruit its sweetness into more common U.S. plants, such as watermelons. Since then, it has expanded the scope of its work to include adding the monk fruit genetic codes into more than 20 different crops, and has worked to develop different forms of the sweetener with different intensities of sweetness. 

Meanwhile, work to save the Cavendish banana continues through its partnership with Dole, one of the world’s largest producers of fresh fruits and vegetables.

First identified in the 1990s in Taiwan, and after years of battling the fungus across the Eastern Hemisphere, Fusarium TR4 has since made its way into the Americas, when it was discovered along the coastal region of Colombia in 2019 – prompting a national state of emergency, amid fears that it will spread across South America.

Since the discovery of TR4 in Colombia, Dole has intensified its efforts to combat the fungus – announcing an immediate three-year containment program that same year to ensure biocontrol measures were being taken at every Dole banana farm and those of its suppliers.

The company has also begun working closely with global research institutions, and, more recently, has begun forging relationships with leading biotechnology companies such as Elo in the search to develop TR4 resistant bananas.

Through this partnership, Elo will assume the responsibility of the discovery, evaluation, and development of multiple approaches for combating and achieving resistance to Fusarium wilt; while Dole will conduct field evaluations, and will oversee the commercialization of the resulting Cavendish varieties that are resistant to Fusarium TR4.

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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