what's happening at napigen
March 20, 2025: The USDA’s Biotechnology Regulatory Services (BRS) of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) has recently notified NAPIGEN that its rice plants that have gene-edited mitochondrial DNA for the cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) trait are not subject to USDA regulation under 7 CFR Part 340. This is the first example of a plant with gene-edited mitochondrial DNA undergoing regulatory review by the USDA. Related news release, click here.
December 24, 2024: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a second patent (US 12173295 B2) to NAPIGEN, Inc. for the use of CRISPR technologies to edit organellar genomes.
September 22, 2024: Dr. Hajime Sakai, Co-Founder & CEO, discussed NAPIGEN’s mitochondrial gene editing technology as a speaker at the Workshop “Floral Biology Traits for Hybrid Wheat” of the 3rd International Wheat Congress held in Perth, Australia.
June 6, 2024: The Commissioner of Patents for the Australian Patent Office has granted a patent, AU 2018320864 B2, to NAPIGEN, Inc. for the use of CRISPR technologies to edit organellar genomes.
March 5, 2024: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a patent to NAPIGEN, Inc. for the use of CRISPR technologies to edit organellar genomes. For the related press release, click here.
February 24, 2024: NAPIGEN has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant from USDA NIFA. NAPIGEN will develop a herbicide resistance trait that is incapable of pollen transmission to weed plants. For the related press release, click here.
October 31, 2022: NAPIGEN welcomes two new board members, Drs. Nandini Krishnamurthy and Michael Gillespie. They join Drs. Ganesh Kishore, Roger Wyse and Hajime Sakai in directing the company to the next growth phase. Together, the NAPIGEN Board aims to develop businesses in life sciences, especially for increasing the yield of major crop plants by use of its proprietary mitochondrial engineering.
Nandini is Vice President, Microbial Business Area, at Inscripta, a leading CRISPR technology company that has commercialized the Onyx® platform automating massive parallel genome engineering in microbes. Before Inscripta, she led a gene editing group at Corteva, delivering innovative solutions in creating diverse traits among multiple crop plants. Nandini holds a PhD from Texas A&M, College Station, TX.
Michael is Senior Associate at RA Capital Management. Michael's primary responsibility is to identify compelling opportunities to help facilitate new company creation and early-stage investing. Michael holds an MD from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine.
NAPIGEN is now set for accelerating the mission to produce more food and protect our precious environment!
July 12, 2022: NAPIGEN completed the series seed financial round with $7.85 million thanks to a number of investors, the Grantham Foundation, RA-Capital Management, Breakout Labs/Thiel Foundation, Thrive SVG Ventures, MARSBIO and the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. See press release here.
June 1, 2022: NAPIGEN receives an NIH SBIR grant for the application of our proprietary technologies to enable mitochondrial transformation and gene editing of human cells. This will be the first step toward providing a universal method to cure a number of currently incurable severe diseases caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA.
May 11, 2021: NAPIGEN selected as one of sixteen finalists to pitch their technology at the Startup Stadium held during the BIO International Convention on June 10 -18, 2021.
May 7, 2021: MarsBio invests in NAPIGEN. MarsBio supports startup companies having paradigm shifting biology. Read about it here.
March 3, 2021: Dr. Hajime Sakai, Co-Founder & CEO, discussed NAPIGEN’s gene editing technology as a featured speaker at the 8th Plant Genomics & Gene Editing Congress. Find information here.
December 7, 2020: Dr. Macha has joined the NAPIGEN team as a visiting scientist. Dr. Macha completed her Ph.D. degree in bioengineering at the University of Massachusetts in 2020, where she gained an array of skills pertaining to cellular research and material synthesis. She obtained her Masters degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Florida in 2013. With her unique knowledge and experience in mammalian cell and tissue culture, she is well suited to make significant progress in mitochondrial gene editing of mammalian cells.
December 2, 2020: Hajime Sakai, CEO & co-founder at NAPIGEN, presented the latest advancements of NAPIGEN’s science as an invited speaker at the 4th CRISPR AgBio Congress. For the program of the digital event, click here.
November 20, 2020: NAPIGEN wins the best startup company in the Industrial Biotechnology category at the world-wide competition, Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge, organized in Paris, France. For more information click here.
October 16, 2020: We are featured in this Delaware Sustainable Chemistry Alliance blog article. Please see the article here.
October 12, 2020: We are featured in the journal, "Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News". Please see the article here.
September 1, 2020: Elmer Heppard has joined NAPIGEN. Elmer is a veteran of DuPont R&D with tremendous experience in the molecular genetics of microbes and plants. At DuPont he received several awards and award nominations for his contributions there. He obtained his Ms. Sci. degree from the University of Delaware. He will assist our operation in the development of efficient molecular tools for organelle transformation and gene editing.
September 1, 2020: NAPIGEN has received a grant from the USDA/NIFA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. In this project, we will use our technology for genome editing of organelles to facilitate the introduction of a hybrid crop system in a self-pollinating non-hybrid crop plant. The goal is to introduce a cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) system into cereal plants. The use of hybrid crop systems, i.e., crops with separate male and female lines used to produce hybrid seed, is a proven method for increasing crop productivity. Research has shown that hybrid wheat plants with currently available inbred parents already have a potential to increase yield by 15%. Our published work has demonstrated the successful application of CRISPR technology to gene editing of mitochondria in yeast and chloroplasts in an alga. In Phase I of this project, we will extend our proprietary technology to plant mitochondria. The successful application of our technology to monocot mitochondria will enable us to proceed with our Phase II goal of creating elite CMS lines in wheat. The US wheat crop corresponds to about 6% of the global wheat production. The extra yield created by use of hybrid wheat in the US initially would correspond to a total annual value of about $1.4 billion. Furthermore, this application of our technology would not be limited to wheat but would also be applicable to yield improvement in other self-pollinating crop plants such as rice, barley, and rye.
June 29, 2020: The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (UMDF) awards the accelerators prize to NAPIGEN. For more information click here.
February 26, 2020: Hajime Sakai, Co-Founder & CEO of NAPIGEN, will be presenting at the 4th Annual CRISPR AgBio Congress held in San Diego, CA, from June 23-25, 2020. The program PDF can be found here.
January 28, 2020: News Release about NAPIGEN’s publication, “Cas9/gRNA-mediated genome editing of yeast mitochondria and Chlamydomonas chloroplasts”, appeared in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PeerJ-Life and Environment (PeerJ 8:e8362) To see the news release, please click here.
January 16, 2020: NAPIGEN is selected as one of the finalists out of more than 5,000 companies to present a talk at the “Hello Tomorrow” Conference that will be held in Paris on March 12-13, 2020. For more information, please click here and here.
December 10, 2019: Cheryl Caster and Amanuel ("Manny") Kiflemariam have joined NAPIGEN to work on the development of hybrid crops. Cheryl has extensive experience in plant transformation. Her previous accomplishments at DuPont Pioneer include the design and implementation of a high-throughput transformation process for the production of transgenic soybean. She will function as Research Director, Product Development, and drive organelle gene editing R&D toward making groundbreaking changes in agriculture. Manny also has past experience with high-throughput research and development operations at DuPont Pioneer. He will assist our operation as Research Associate in plant genetics. The NAPIGEN Team is excited to have Cheryl and Manny as new members.
November 12, 2019: Jim Borel, a former DuPont executive vice president, joins NAPIGEN as a private investor.
November 7, 2019: NAPIGEN was one of nine companies showcased at the Unboxing Event in San Francisco, organized by Breakout Labs. For more information click here.
October 25, 2019: The Grantham Foundation provides $1,000,000 in funding to support NAPIGEN’s work on increasing the yield of crop plants, decreasing agricultural chemical applications and reducing the need to convert natural habitats into new farmland. For more information about the Grantham Foundation visit: http://www.granthamfoundation.org/
September 18, 2019: NAPIGEN wins the EDGE grant from the State of Delaware.
Click here for more information.
August 22, 2019: NAPIGEN receives the certificate for a Minority Business Enterprise from the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council.
August 1, 2019: Dr. Dilbag Multani joins NAPIGEN as Research Director, Plant Genetics.
Click here for more information.
July 1, 2019: Steve Allen joined NAPIGEN as bioinformatics advisor. Steve has extensive experience in computational biology from his work at DuPont over 30 years. He has inventorship in more than 80 US patents.
Click here for more information.
June 1, 2019: Dr. Venkatesan Sundaresan, professor at the University of California, Davis, joins NAPIGEN as scientific consultant.
Click here for more information.
May 23, 2019: NAPIGEN is chosen for one of the finalists to present at the Startup Stadium, BIO 2019 World Congress, held on July 8-11 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Click here for more information.
May 9, 2019: The patent application “Organelle genome modification using polynucleotide guided endonuclease” is published in US (US 2019/0136249 A1)
May 2, 2019: NAPIGEN is chosen for one of the finalists to present at the Startup Stadium, BIO 2019 International Convention, held on June 3-6 in Philadelphia.
Click here for more information.
April 22, 2019: NAPIGEN wins “Pitch to Partnering” program of Delaware Bio.
March 18, 2019: Presentation at the World Ag-Tech Pitch Day in San Francisco, CA.
Click here for more information.
March 7, 2019: Breakout Labs grants the fund to NAPIGEN, Inc.
Click here for more information.
February 19, 2019: Radicle Growth chose NAPIGEN, Inc. as one of the eight finalists from over 150 international entries for the Radicle Challenge competition
Click here for more information.
October 19, 2018: Dr. Peter Langridge, professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia, International Science Coordinator at the Wheat Initiative, joins NAPIGEN as scientific advisor.
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June 26-28, 2018: Presentation and showcase at THRIVE Demo Day in Forbes Ag Tech Summit in Salinas, CA.
April 1, 2018: Dr. Thomas Fox, professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics,
Cornell University, joins NAPIGEN as scientific advisor.
Click here for more information.
March 14, 2018: THRIVE SVG selects NAPIGEN as one of the nine cohorts out of 167 companies
worldwide for their Accelerator program.
Click here for more information.
