Genesis Research and Development Corporation today announced the appointment of Dr Nathan Bach as Vice President of Business Development, responsible for expanding the company’s Plant Sciences commercial activities in North America.

Dr Nathan Bach is based in California and will seek licensing opportunities in the agricultural and life sciences industries, identify potential business partners and build relationships with them.

He has a wealth of experience in biotechnology and genomics. His appointment is designed to accelerate the pace at which Genesis can deploy its growing base of intellectual property and its highly productive genomics research capabilities. Genesis expects to establish new partnerships and develop additional revenue streams from licensing plant technologies and proprietary databases.

Dr Jim Watson, Chief Executive of Genesis Research and Development, says Dr Bach has been appointed to help develop the full potential of the company’s Plant Sciences division and to build on the strengths of existing partnerships with North American companies including MeadWestvaco and International Paper.

"In the past six months, Genesis has been actively working towards establishing new partnerships in the Northern Hemisphere, in the fields of both health and plant sciences," said Dr Watson. "Because of the length of time involved in visiting and entering negotiations with potential partners, it has become increasingly clear that we would be more effective if we sited Business Development Managers in the United States.

"While Nathan will be based in North America, reporting directly to me, he will be a regular visitor to New Zealand, meeting with Genesis management and science teams."

Prior to joining Genesis, Nathan Bach was Director, West Coast Business Development and Sales for Integrated Genomics Inc, a leader in genomic sequencing. In this role he was responsible for developing business partnerships, sales opportunities and building strong industry-wide networks. He has also worked for Ventro Corporation (formerly Chemdex) as an analyst specialising in regulatory affairs, AmCell Corporation and Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute.

Nathan holds a Ph.D in Chemical Immunology from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and a Masters degree in Biochemistry from Moscow State University. He has a broad base of research experience and has published widely.

About Genesis
Founded in 1994, Genesis is a New Zealand-based biotechnology company committed to the development of innovative products in health and plant biotechnology from its broad genomic platform. Genesis partners with industry leaders to develop products which have global market potential through the mining of its extensive microbe, plant and mammalian EST databases.

The Plant Sciences division is focussing on key cell signalling genes – novel hormones and transcription factors - to control commercial traits including wood fibre quality in trees, nutritional content of forage grasses, flowering control, salt and cold tolerance and superior growth rates. It has developed comprehensive plant EST databases including the world’s largest EST database for commercial forestry species. It has research collaborations with ArborGen LLC, Wrightson (NZSE: WRI), HortResearch, AgResearch and Landcare. Genesis is also undertaking significant unpartnered research programmes in novel plant hormones. A number of patents are held including 12 steps in the production of lignin.

The Health Sciences Division focuses on signalling pathways and the immune system and has an extensive patent portfolio. It has three programmes in human clinical development utilising PVAC™ and AVAC™ for the treatment of psoriasis, atopic dermatitis (eczema) and asthma. Additional pre-clinical programmes are developing YB-1, FGFR5, MED-1 and Epigen for cancer and other indications. The patented BioStore solutions for storage of tissues and living cells are also in pre-clinical development. Collaborations are maintained with Immunex Corporation (NASDAQ: IMNX), Corixa Corporation (NASDAQ: CRXA), SR Pharma (LSE: SPA), and Jurox Pty Ltd.