ROSEVILLE, Minn., Oct. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Calyxt,
Inc. (Nasdaq: CLXT), a plant-based synthetic
biotechnology company, today announced the launch of a
strategic initiative that will focus the Company on engineering
synthetic biology solutions for a diversified base of customers
across an expanded group of end markets including the
nutraceutical, cosmeceutical, pharmaceutical, advanced materials,
and chemical industries.
Central to the strategy is the integration of the Company's
proprietary technology platform, PlantSpring, with its newly
commissioned pilot bioreactor, the BioFactory, which together will
enable Calyxt to rapidly prototype and produce complex
plant-derived compounds without the need for outdoor cropping
systems. The Company estimates that, aided by machine learning and
artificial intelligence, it will be able to take a customer's
molecule need through Calyxt's design, engineering, verification,
and pilot-level production process within a 36-month period, with
commercial scale production to commence thereafter. The final
output, based upon the engineering of plant metabolism to mass
produce plant-based compounds, is designed to provide customers
across industries a safe and more sustainable supply of these
compounds for use in a myriad of products and manufacturing
processes.
"By leveraging our proprietary PlantSpring technology platform
with our newly commissioned pilot bioreactor, the BioFactory,
Calyxt has the pieces in place to advance plant-based synthetic
biology solutions for important target customers and end markets to
help those groups produce more sustainable products toward meeting
their corporate sustainability targets," said Michael A. Carr, President and Chief Executive
Officer of Calyxt. "These new potential customers include large
corporations within such industries as nutraceuticals,
cosmeceuticals, personal care, and pharmaceuticals, as well as
companies that manufacture advanced materials and chemicals."
Mr. Carr added: "Through our engineering of the metabolism of
plants, Calyxt unlocks plants' ability to exponentially multiply
production of finite biomolecules into large quantities, enabled
within a bioreactor that does not use fermentation or farmland. As
a result, Calyxt offers customers the opportunity to target a broad
range of plant biomolecules and applications produced through a
highly sustainable process, and within a highly efficient timeframe
aided by our emerging machine learning and artificial intelligence
toolkit. Our efforts are already underway to market our expanded
offerings to new target customers."
PlantSpring Technology Platform: Built on a Decade of
Engineering Experience
The Company's technology platform, newly named PlantSpring, has
been built on Calyxt's experience of more than a decade engineering
plant metabolism, its proprietary systems, its tools and
technologies, and an expanding set of artificial intelligence and
machine learning capabilities. This licensable platform has powered
the Calyxt innovation engine, previously focused primarily on the
agriculture end market. Together with the BioFactory, this platform
opens a wide array of new end markets to Calyxt.
The platform delivers innovation through an efficient process
from laboratory to pilot, which includes identification of
breakthrough molecules based on customer needs and design
strategies to reprogram host cells; engineering of plant cell
metabolism to optimally produce targeted molecules; and production
of target molecules at pilot scale. Calyxt has developed
early-stage artificial intelligence and machine learning
capabilities in PlantSpring, which enable learning and adaptation
from knowledge gained from past activity and can be combined with
predictive analytics to rapidly prototype and provide feedback,
accelerating the time from design to pilot and de-risking the
commercial scale-up phase. As a result, Calyxt believes it can
develop engineered biomolecules in plants for customers at faster
speeds than its competitors in the synthetic biology industry.
Calyxt expects to continue to develop its artificial intelligence
and machine learning capabilities end-to-end across the PlantSpring
platform and the BioFactory and anticipates this augmentation to
continue to drive down development timeframes.
"Calyxt's scientists are experts at engineering plant
metabolism, which includes enabling the plant cells to produce more
or less of certain chemistries, or novel chemistries, that may be
unique to plants. The scientific team has demonstrated this
capability many times over across multiple plant species," said
Travis Frey, Ph.D., Chief Technology
Officer of Calyxt. "We leverage our PlantSpring technology platform
as the engine that drives Calyxt's R&D capabilities. It
combines our company's decade of technology, know-how and
intellectual property and enables us to engineer important plant
biomolecules, often found at scarcity in nature, and to eventually
produce these biomolecules at scale for our customers."
The BioFactory: Leveraging the Power of Plants to
Efficiently and Sustainably Manufacture at Scale
The output from the PlantSpring platform integrates seamlessly
with the Company's newly commissioned BioFactory.
The BioFactory is the culmination of the work of Calyxt's
researchers and will enable the Company to expand its production
methods from solely outdoor agriculture systems to also include
controlled environment, bioreactor-based production systems.
In a world seeking to evolve to more sustainable solutions, the
Company believes that plants are uniquely capable of producing many
compounds that cannot be produced through other currently available
means, including microbial fermentation. Calyxt estimates that more
than 80 percent of all known natural compounds are able to be
produced by plants. These known natural compounds comprise over
200,000 chemistries today, and the Company believes plants have the
potential to access many of the nearly one million estimated
chemistries not yet discovered.
The BioFactory harnesses the potential of plant cells in a
matrixed structure, combined with nutrients and media for its
production, and leverages multiple cell types. The matrix
structures enable controlled replication and processing of
molecules, with the replication accelerating exponentially over
time.
The BioFactory produces these plant-based molecules within
a synthetic biology bioreactor. Calyxt has produced multiple
proof of concept biomolecules in its laboratories. The initial
pilot BioFactory will operate from Calyxt's headquarters in
Roseville, Minnesota, and is
currently expected to be online by the end of 2021. The Company
plans to work with infrastructure partners to build capabilities to
produce at larger scales to meet anticipated customer demand. The
transition from pilot to commercialization is expected to be
facilitated through third-party contract manufacturers, who can
provide at-scale production in support of Calyxt's asset-light
strategy. The Company anticipates that its customer demand-driven
focus and use of third-party contractors for at-scale manufacturing
address key uncertainties of anticipating market demand and the
cost constraints of maintaining at-scale production capacity.
Significantly, Calyxt's BioFactory manufacturing process relies
on plant cell matrices for production, and its initial growth rates
using this system have presented a strong productivity curve.
Evaluated in grams per day over a 30-day period, these initial
results suggest Calyxt's plant cells grow more than five times
faster than other plant-based systems, as reported in the
scientific literature to date.
The Company's manufacturing approach notably does not use
fermentation. As a result, Calyxt's process at scale is expected to
be simpler, create less water waste and disposal, and allow
customers to stack multiple molecules from plants, even potentially
turning by-products into useful products.
"The scaled production of these biomolecules through our
BioFactory will be vital for our customers because it will provide
them with more sustainable-sourced materials for their own
manufacturing processes," said Dr. Frey. "Furthermore,
we believe the BioFactory has the potential to be one of the
most productive and sustainable plant-based processes across
industries because of its production methodology. Based on our
initial test results we expect to produce compounds at higher
yields and throughputs on a per-unit basis, which is one of
the reasons we believe the BioFactory can be scaled. Because it
does not use fermentation, we expect fewer of the sustainability
challenges associated with other indoor systems, including
potentially lower levels of off-gasses, reduced water demands and
lower energy requirements."
Technology Licensing and Partnered Agricultural
Development
As a synergistic component of its expanded strategy, the Company
expects to continue to license its technology and develop products
for agricultural customers based on their needs.
With respect to technology licensing, this activity spans
Calyxt's vast intellectual property library including multiple gene
editing platforms, plant breeding, and other capabilities as well
as the licensing of historically developed product candidates,
including improved digestibility alfalfa licensed to S&W Seeds,
high oleic, low linolenic soybeans, and product candidates derived
from its hemp advancements.
As demonstrated by the recent announcement of a new product to
be developed for a partner in soybeans, Calyxt will continue to
opportunistically develop products for customers focused on
traditional outdoor agriculture. To ensure appropriate resourcing
of the opportunities, Calyxt has developed a set of criteria by
which all opportunities are vetted, which include the size of the
overall opportunity, the nature of the product to be developed, and
the amount of cash to be received both upfront and over time.
Recent Corporate & Financial Highlights
- Appointed Michael A. Carr as its
President, Chief Executive Officer, and member of its Board of
Directors effective July 27, 2021.
Mr. Carr brings more than 20 years of business, financial and
operational leadership experience to Calyxt and will focus on
advancing and monetizing Calyxt's technologies. Prior to joining
Calyxt, he most recently served as Vice President of M&A,
Strategy, and Innovation at Darling Ingredients, Inc.
- Successfully transformed the hemp genome and produced
"pollen-proof" (seedless) hemp with its triploid breeding
technology. Combined, Calyxt's hemp advancements offer significant
advantages in innovation, crop management, and harvest potential.
In our partner-driven model, we can now develop and deliver hemp
products tailored for their needs across plant-based proteins and
oils, advanced materials, fiber, cosmeceuticals, nutraceuticals,
and others.
- On September 21, 2021, launched a
$50 million at-the-market (ATM) share
issuance program. As of today, the Company has not sold any shares
pursuant to the program.
- Entered into a research collaboration with a leading global
food ingredient manufacturer based in Asia to develop an improved soybean capable of
producing an oil as a sustainable commercial alternative to palm
oil. As part of the research collaboration, Calyxt will receive
cash payments in each of the two years of its term. This
collaboration agreement also includes a commercial option for the
global food ingredient manufacturer.
- As of September 30, 2021, Calyxt
had cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash of $14.9 million. This represents cash usage
of approximately $3.6 million in the
third quarter of 2021. This strong cash performance was driven by
collections from the sale of grain to Archer Daniels Midland (ADM),
continued declines in the Company's working capital investment
associated with the wind down of that grain sales activity, and
strong operating expense management.
- As of today, Calyxt has nearly completed the sale of its
inventory of 2020 grain to ADM. This series of transactions, which
began in the third quarter of 2020, has generated $35.7 million in total cash proceeds. The Company
remains on track to complete these sales by the end of the
year.
Conference Call and Webcast
President and Chief Executive Officer Michael A. Carr, Chief Financial Officer
Bill Koschak, and Chief Technology
Officer Dr. Travis Frey will host a
conference call and webcast discussing Calyxt's business update,
followed by a question-and-answer session. The conference call will
be accompanied by a presentation, which can be viewed during the
webcast or accessed via the investor relations section of Calyxt's
website, www.calyxt.com.
To access the call, please use the following information:
Date: Tuesday, October 5, 2021
Time: 4:30 p.m. ET, 1:30 p.m. PT
Toll Free dial-in number: +1 888-317-6003
Toll/International dial-in number: +1 412-317-6061
Conference ID: 9817980
Participants should call the conference telephone number 5 to 10
minutes prior to the start time. An operator will register
participants' names and organizations. The conference call will
also be broadcast live and available for replay via the investor
relations section of the company's website, www.calyxt.com. A
replay of the webcast will be available for 30 days following the
event.
Toll Free Replay Number: +1-877-344-7529
International Replay Number: +1-412-317-0088
Replay ID: 10160509
About Calyxt
Calyxt (Nasdaq: CLXT) is a plant-based synthetic biotechnology
company. The Company leverages its proprietary PlantSpring™
technology platform to engineer innovative materials and products
for its customers to help them meet their sustainability goals.
Calyxt's diversified offerings are delivered through its
proprietary BioFactory™ manufacturing process. For more
information, visit www.calyxt.com.
PlantSpring, BioFactory and the Calyxt logo are trademarks of
Calyxt, Inc. Any other trademarks belong to their respective
owners.
Forward-Looking Statements
This communication contains "forward-looking statements" within
the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can
identify these statements by forward-looking words such as
"anticipates," "believes," "continue," "estimates," "expects,"
"intends," "may," "might," "plans," "predicts," "projects,"
"should," "targets," "will," or the negative of these terms and
other similar terminology. Forward-looking statements in this press
release include statements about our future financial performance;
product pipeline and development; our business model and strategies
for the development, commercialization and sales of commercial
products; commercial demand for our synthetic biology solutions;
the development and deployment of our PlantSpring technology
platform; the ability to scale production capability for our
BioFactory; flaws in artificial intelligence and machine learning
(AI/ML) algorithms, insufficiency of data inputs required by such
algorithms, and human error in interacting with AI/ML; potential
collaborations, partnerships, customer relationships, and licensing
arrangements and their contribution to our financial results, cash
usage, and growth strategies; and anticipated trends in our
business. These and other forward-looking statements are
predictions and projections about future events and trends based on
our current expectations, objectives and intentions and premised on
current assumptions. Our actual results, level of activity,
performance, or achievements could be materially different than
those expressed, implied, or anticipated by forward-looking
statements due to a variety of factors, including, but not limited
to: the severity and duration of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic and
the resulting impact on macro-economic conditions; the impact of
increased competition, including competition from a broader array
of synthetic biology companies; disruptions at our key facilities,
including disruptions impacting our BioFactory; changes in customer
preferences and market acceptance of our products; changes in
market consensus as to what attributes are required for a product
to be considered "sustainable," competition for collaboration
partners and licensees and the successful execution of
collaborations and licensing agreements; the impact of adverse
events during development, including unsuccessful pilot production
of molecules or field trials; the impact of improper handling of
our product candidates during development; failures by third-party
contractors; inaccurate demand forecasting; the effectiveness of
commercialization efforts by commercial partners or licensees;
disruptions to supply chains, including raw material inputs for our
BioFactory; the impact of changes or increases in oversight and
regulation; disputes or challenges regarding intellectual property;
proliferation and continuous evolution of new technologies;
management changes; dislocations in the capital markets; and other
important factors discussed under the caption entitled "Risk
Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings
on Form 10-Q or 8-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. We do not assume any obligation to publicly provide
revisions or updates to any forward-looking statements, whether as
a result of new information, future developments or otherwise,
should circumstances change, except as otherwise required by
law.
The financial information as of, and for the quarter ended,
September 30, 2021, included in this
press release is preliminary and is based on the latest estimated
unaudited management accounts. Such information is subject to
the completion of management's reviews and other financial closing
processes and potential adjustments. Accordingly, the
Company's actual cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash
position as of September 30, 2021,
and cash usage for the quarter may differ materially from the
preliminary estimated data presented in this press release.
The information contained in this press release has not been, and
is not based on information that has been, audited or reviewed by
Calyxt's independent auditor.
Contacts:
Calyxt Media Contact:
|
Calyxt Investor Relations
Contact:
|
David Rosen/Sarah
Sutton/John Garabo
Argot
Partners
(212)
600-1902
media@calyxt.com
|
Sherri
Spear
Argot
Partners
(212)
600-1902
investors@calyxt.com
|
Calyxt Business Development
Contact:
|
|
Sarah
Reiter
Calyxt,
Inc.
(612)
427-7881
contact@calyxt.com
|
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