TraitSeq: using AI to accelerate agricultural product development

TraitSeq, the Earlham Institute’s first spin-out company, accelerates the development of agricultural products. Through their cutting-edge machine learning approaches, TraitSeq provides insights that enhance decision making, ensuring the development of innovative agricultural solutions.

TraitSeq technology uses information on the RNA present in an organism, along with machine learning. Their technology can benefit the following sectors:

• Crop Protection and Biostimulants
• Gene Editing and Engineering
• Trait Discovery and Pathway Analysis

Evaluating the performance of new products and edited varieties normally requires extensive glasshouse and field trials. TraitSeq’s biomarkers empower agritech companies to confidently identify the most promising solutions so that new products can be marketed faster.

The company was co-founded by Dr Joshua Colmer, Professor Anthony Hall, John Bloomer and Dr Felicity Knowles. TraitSeq’s technology originated from the research conducted during Dr Colmer’s PhD at the Earlham Institute. He was supported by a BBSRC National Productivity Investment Fund studentship focused on using AI to tackle industrial challenges.

Co-founder Professor Hall received a BBSRC Research Development Fellowship in 2010 entitled “Developing Next Generation Genetic Tools for Wheat”. TraitSeq extends the development of this research area.

Prior to spin-out, BBSRC Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) funding enabled the initial development and validation of the technology through engaging with industry. Since this, TraitSeq has gone from strength to strength and has received further investment through Innovate UK and pre-seed investors, along with generating commercial revenue.

Developing human models to reduce animal use in research

Newcells is a Newcastle University spin-out specialising in the production of 3D models replicating human retina, kidney, and lung tissues. It was co-founded by Lyle Armstrong, Professor of Cellular Reprogramming at Newcastle University, and Dr Mike Nicholds in 2015.

The models stem from the Newcells team’s expertise in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Knowledge gained from BBSRC-funded grants has contributed to this. iPSCs can specialise to become nearly any cell type in a human adult and form the basis of Newcells’ technology. The use of BBSRC funding to support research into iPSCs helped to enable the spin-out of the company.

Newcells’ tissue models can be used by pharmaceutical companies to investigate how their drugs interact with tissues, supporting drug discovery while reducing the need for animals in pre-clinical trial drug testing.

In 2017, Newcells was awarded £1 million to work on a project led by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to develop their retinal model for toxicology studies. This has since been successfully commercialised and is available for use in drug testing by companies globally alongside their other tissue models.

With support from Mercia Asset Management and NorthStar Ventures, the company continues to improve their commercial offerings and, in September 2024, launched tools to complement its lung models. These developments should help to provide more data to companies to support decision making during drug development and help to bring pharmaceuticals to market quicker.