Agricultural Biotech Cibus Expanding as Launch of First Enhanced Crop Nears
[Corrected 10/28/10, 9:45 am. See below.] San Diego-based Cibus Global held an open house last night at the company’s new headquarters, which gave me an opportunity to get an update from CEO Keith Walker on the agricultural biotech’s growth spurt since last year.
The startup, which officially spun out of Pennsylvania-based ValiGen in late 2001, is marking the commercial introduction of its first enhanced crop—an herbicide-resistant strain of canola—in coming weeks. Cibus also plans to expand its workforce, from 52 to 60 employees by the start of 2011, and has moved its headquarters into a refurbished leased facility once occupied by La Jolla Pharmaceuticals. The impressive, platinum LEED-certified space might even mark the beginning of a tech resurgence among the vacancies that pockmark Sorrento Valley’s Nancy Ridge Drive.
Keith Walker
“It’s been a fabulous 15 to 18 months for us,” Walker says. “We’ve done almost $50 million worth of transactions on behalf of the company with corporate partners.”
[Corrected to explain the technique used by Cibus does not insert an entire gene] Cibus, for everyone who neglected to take Latin, is roughly translated as “food for man.” The company uses its proprietary “Rapid Trait Development System” technology to achieve a desired trait, such as resistance to a widely used weed killer, in certain crops it has targeted. Cibus has managed to sidestep harsh protests over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, because its
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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