Intrexon announces AgBio Division launch and Agarigen acquisition

Intrexon Corporation, a next generation synthetic biology company, today announced the launch of its Agricultural Biotechnology (AgBio) Division in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and the acquisition of Agarigen, Inc., a North Carolina-based company that has developed a novel, mushroom-based expression platform for the rapid, high yield production of recombinant proteins. Matthew B. Crisp has been appointed Division President and a Senior Vice President of the company. Mr. Crisp was most recently a Managing Director of Third Security, LLC in Radford, Virginia, a globally recognized investment company led by Randal J. Kirk, Intrexon's Chairman and CEO.

“The acquisition of Agarigen provides Intrexon's AgBio Division with a strong team with a wealth of agbio experience and an immediately operational capability. Execution of our launch plan is now officially underway at all levels.”

"Matt has been the driving force behind the planning and launch of Intrexon's AgBio Division and our main proponent for the acquisition of Agarigen," states Kirk. "He has contributed for the past five years to Intrexon's development as part of the Third Security investment team, recognizing early the significance of Intrexon's capabilities. I look forward to supporting Matt's leadership of this new division."

According to Crisp, the launch of Intrexon's AgBio Division is the culmination of a strategic initiative that started in late 2009. "We have believed for some time that Intrexon's core technology and capabilities will have game-changing impact in the agricultural sector," says Crisp. "Our discussions with industry leaders during the past year strongly support the belief that Intrexon's ability to rationally design and produce many variations of custom complex transgenes, in record time and quantities, is an excellent complement to next generation agbio expression platforms and the numerous genetic traits that have been developed." He continues, "Many of the agbio advancements that have occurred over the past two decades are now ready for Intrexon's ability to tightly integrate and control multiple traits and genetic circuits to maximize yield, lower costs, and deliver the next wave of opportunities for agbio applications and products."

Crisp's comments are amplified by Thomas Reed, PhD, Intrexon's Chief Science Officer. "The acquisition of Agarigen underscores the close synergy between Intrexon's technology capabilities and the next generation of agbio expression platforms," states Reed. "Mushrooms are prodigious producers of complex proteins and have been considered a highly attractive biological system for the scalable and cost-effective production of specialized, high value recombinant products. However, the successful development of the genome modification methodologies and supporting genetic components that are required to harness this powerful protein output were not realized until the breakthrough research of Dr. Peter Romaine at The Pennsylvania State University. Agarigen obtained rights to Dr. Romaine's inventions and has convincingly demonstrated that their expression platform can be run at scale and within highly desirable economics. I am very excited that the Agarigen team and technology are now part of Intrexon's global mission and look forward to empowering their scientific talents in combination with our leading synthetic biology capabilities."

Donald Walters, PhD, formerly Agarigen's Chief Operating Officer and now VP of Research & Development for Intrexon's AgBio Division, reciprocates, "The Agarigen team is excited about the opportunity to bring together our years of experience in food crop biotechnology, and novel plant and mushroom protein production systems, with the technology and top-notch team at Intrexon. We believe that combining Agarigen with Intrexon will provide an outstanding opportunity to accomplish a variety of additional breakthroughs across the spectrum of agbio."

Concludes Crisp, "The acquisition of Agarigen provides Intrexon's AgBio Division with a strong team with a wealth of agbio experience and an immediately operational capability. Execution of our launch plan is now officially underway at all levels."