Helping crops defeat disease
About

Resurrect Bio is a plant biotech start-up, based in London. We will improve the immune system of crop species.

Climate change is causing diseases to spreading to new locations, meaning the disease spectrum farmers are dealing with is expanding.

Crops were bred over generations by plant breeders to improve key traits such as yield, height or drought-tolerance, but sometimes inadvertently lost key immune resistance genes (R-genes).

Additionally, modern monocultures are static in evolution, but the pests and pathogens that threaten them are not.

Plant diseases are constantly evolving new ways of defeating the R-genes in crops.

Our mission is to Resurrect R-genes to give our crops the tools to defend themselves again.


Our Technology
  • R-gene experiments can take decades in crop species.
  • Recent breakthroughs allow us to reconstitute networks of immune receptors in our model species.
  • We use fast-forward techniques that give us results in days, not years.
  • We will leverage our unique understanding of the immune receptor networks in plants and pathogen effector biology, to fix the immune system of our crop species.

Current Work - reSOYrrect

We will use gene editing to resurrect defeated resistance genes in soy, allowing it to defend itself.

Diseases in soy are devastating for sustainable farming, for instance $1.5 billion dollars of yield is lost to soybean cyst nematode in the US alone, every year. This microscopic worm-like parasite has no effective chemical control for use in the US market.


We’re just getting started and we will work on other crops and pathogens.

Why genetic control over chemical control?

  • More precise: Genetic control only kills bad microbes that are actually eating the crop, leaves the rest alone.
  • No leakage and accumulation of chemicals into the soil or environment: our system only uses the plant's own immune system to attack the microbe, we just fine tune it to recognise the pathogens again.
  • Better for the climate crisis: our approach uses no fossil fuel based chemicals.
  • Increased genetic diversity of crops: whilst our approach can be applied to any crop/disease, it is a tailor made solution for each crop and disease, therefore increasing rather than diminishing genetic diversity.
  • No foreign DNA introduced: our solution can be achieved through gene editing of the crop's own DNA.
  • Robust disease resistance: we can predict how the pathogen will evolve to overcome our disease control measures.
Leadership Team
Dr Cian Duggan

Dr Cian Duggan

CEO / Co-Founder

Dr Tolga Bozkurt

Dr Tolga Bozkurt

Co-Founder

Prof Sophien Kamoun

Prof Sophien Kamoun

Co-Founder

Supported By

Hosted by
Imperial College Incubator