Berkeley Lights Inc. (NASDAQ: BLI) and Aanika Biosciences have announced a strategic collaboration that will allow accelerated identification of outbreak sources, minimize fresh produce contamination incidences and reduce the impact of food-borne illness associated recalls.
Aanika to use Berkeley Lights’ tech to identify AMPs
Aanika will employ Berkeley Lights’ high-throughput, operational screening service to quickly identify and enhance functional antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) suitable for eliminating dangerous bacteria, particularly those that cause food-borne illness outbreaks, as part of this collaboration. Furthermore, the Beacon Optofluidic System will be used to identify harmful peptides to bacteria to develop a new antibacterial tag that will be added to the bacterial spore-based barcoding technique to safeguard the food supply chain.
The company’s CEO, Eric Hobbs, said, “Berkeley Lights’ high-throughput, functional screening service, based on our proprietary cell-free expression technology, is accelerating novel discoveries to develop solutions and products in the agricultural space. Specifically, applying the Berkeley Lights platform to AMPs allows us to rapidly map and identify the top mutational sites to further optimize AMP performance.”
Antibacterial compounds known as AMPs are gaining appeal in a variety of applications, especially as germs become increasingly immune to antibiotics, and are a significant priority for both firms.
Aanika’s watermark tech can trace, track and identify food-borne illness origin
Aanika CEO and co-founder Vishaal Bhuyan stated, “Tracking, tracing and identifying the origin of food borne illnesses is just the beginning of what Aanika’s ‘watermark’ technology can do to help improve and protect our global food system. The partnership with Berkley Lights will enable us to move faster, and go deeper, into uncovering and unlocking the opportunities to have greater economic, environmental and human health impact.”
As part of this strategic agreement, Berkeley Lights will share in the downstream economics generated by its enabling tech through a royalty structure. The agreement’s details aren’t revealed in full. Following the Bayer Relationship announced in 2021, this is Berkeley Lights’ second high-throughput, functional screening partnership.
