INDIANAPOLIS and MENLO PARK, Calif. – Corteva (NYSE: CTVA), a global leader in agricultural technology, and Hexagon Bio, a biotechnology company pioneering a new way to discover nature-derived medicine, today announced a multi-million-dollar joint venture (JV) to accelerate the development of new crop protection solutions inspired by nature. The JV is the first in the agriculture sector for Hexagon Bio and the first in the pharmaceutical industry for Corteva.
The partnership brings together Corteva’s billion-dollar nature-inspired crop protection franchises and bacterial natural product discovery capabilities with Hexagon Bio’s natural product discovery platform to advance the companies’ respective pipelines across agriculture and human health.
“Our partnership with Hexagon Bio expands our discovery engine, taking our crop protection innovation to the next level,” said Sam Eathington, chief technology and digital officer for Corteva. “As demand for nature-inspired solutions continues to grow, this collaboration allows us to move faster and think bigger to provide farmers with the latest options in effective and sustainable tools.”
Hexagon Bio’s platform combines microbial genetics, artificial intelligence, chemistry, and synthetic biology to identify and characterize novel natural products, uncovering diverse mechanisms not obvious from the chemical structure or conventional techniques and allowing for more efficient molecule discovery.
“This partnership allows us to pursue two critical missions simultaneously: developing transformative therapies for patients and delivering new modes of action for global agriculture,” said Maureen Hillenmeyer, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Hexagon Bio. “Our platform generates more high-value chemistry than a single development track can absorb, so we are excited to launch this JV for agriculture while continuing our focus on discovery of natural products for human health.”
The discovery and development of natural products continues to evolve, which makes products inspired by nature and improved by science an important and growing market. They have led to some of the world’s most impactful advancements in human, plant and animal health: from antibiotics like penicillin and the taxane class of cancer medicines, to fungicides and insecticides that protect staple food crops around the world against damaging pests and diseases.
The JV was formed through Corteva Catalyst, Corteva’s investment and collaboration platform. Since its launch in March of 2024, Corteva Catalyst has partnered with 11 companies across its portfolio by investing in biologicals, gene editing and other technology platforms around the world.
