Davis-based plant technology company Botanical Solution Inc. closed a $7.6 million equity round of venture capital to fund production of pharmaceutical-grade plant extracts for use in vaccines.
Otter Capital LLC of Woodside led the round, as it also led a $7 million round in August last year and led a $6 million funding round in 2022.
The new money will fund in-house production of QS-21, a pharmaceutical-grade vaccine adjuvant, that is an extract of the soap bark tree, said Botanical Solution spokesman Jon Amdursky.
Locally, the company works out of shared spaces in Davis and Woodland. It also has a lab in Santiago, Chile, where Botanical Solution was founded in 2013.
The new money will fund production of pharmaceutical-grade QS-21 in labs in or near Davis, Amdursky said. The funding was announced today by CEO Gaston Salinas at Harvard University's Global Health, Biodiversity and Therapeutic Hybrid Seminar in Costa Rica, Amdursky said.
Botanical Solution launched as an ag-tech company, growing and delivering extract products from the soap bark tree, or Quillaja saponaria, which are effective in crop protection.
In December 2022, Botanical Solution announced a partnership agreement with British ingredients company Croda International PLC to ramp up production of its rare sustainable plant extracts that have pharmaceutical uses.
Botanical Solution delivered raw material to England-based Croda, which refined it for pharmaceutical use.
With the new funding, Botanical Solution will begin making the pharmaceutical-grade extract itself.
“This is a pretty big deal to do all that. It is a big step forward,” Amdursky said.
The human health version of QS-21 sells for $400,000 to $500,000 per gram, he said.
By increasing supply, the company hopes to lower the cost to make the extract more available for more vaccines and to make them available in poorer countries.
The problem now is that the supply is low, and the cost is high. It can only be used sparingly in blockbuster drugs, Amdursky said.
Currently, QS-21 is a vital component in FDA-approved vaccines against shingles and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
The soap bark tree is native to Chile, which protects its forests with deforestation laws.
Botanical Solution developed an innovative and proprietary method to produce the extract in controlled conditions, Amdursky said.
The company uses indoor-raised plants as tiny biofactories to manufacture rare extracts in a patented process so the rare and protected species don’t have to be harvested as adult trees in the wild. It manipulates and stresses its plants with precise protocols that create conditions that don’t occur in the wild. As the plant tries to defend itself, it creates the kind of compounds that the company is seeking to encourage and isolate. Botanical Solution grows plant tissue culture indoors in controlled environments on vertical racks in a clean room. The process can keep cultivation going continuously, and it allows its material to be harvested after only 60 days.
Botanical Solution also has partnerships with Switzerland-based crop protection company Syngenta AG to deliver QS-21 extracts from the soap bark tree for agricultural use, where it is used as a fungicide and plant stimulant. That version of QS-21 typically sells for about $30 per liter.
Botanical Solution moved its headquarters to Davis late in 2020 to be near the University of California Davis, which is one of the world's top agricultural universities, and to be closer to Bay Area venture capital investors.
Largely because of the talent at UC Davis, the Sacramento region is a worldwide hub of research and development of biologics technology and seed technology for agriculture, with labs for companies including Bayer, Syngenta, Limagrain, Novozymes and BioConsortia.
