Editor’s note: Charlotte’s entrepreneurial community is growing far beyond a traditional reliance on the Queen City’s financial industry. An example is agbio startup Soymeds. This is the first in a series of exclusive interviews about Charlotte startups. Tuesday evening, HQ Charlotte, a spinout from HQ Raleigh, is holding an evening event offering an “Introduction to the Charlotte Start Up Scene at Advent Coworking.

CHARLOTTE — Sharing a lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte 15 years ago, molecular plant biologist Ken Piller and immunologist Ken Bost asked each other, “What can we do together?” The answer? Use soybeans to make therapeutics to treat, prevent and diagnose disease.

“We realized we could do something by thinking outside the box, use soybeans as a bioreactor to make recombinant proteins that could treat auto-immune disorders, for vaccines, and diagnostics,” Piller told the AgBio Summit in Chapel Hill late in September.

That has many potential advantages. Resulting drugs or vaccines would be safer, cost only pennies a dose, be delivered orally, and have a long-shelf life, Piller explained. “You figure out which specific protein can solve a problem, then get that protein’s gene into the soybean host DNA.” The transgenic soybean plants then produce the protein.

Soybeans are the richest natural source of proteins, containing 40 percent by weight, so it makes sense to use a bioreactor with large protein content to being with.

Funded by NIH grants

In 2005, the researchers created the UNCC spinout Soymeds Inc. to commercialized the process. Piller notes that one of the hurdles a small company faces is “Where does the funding come from? You have to find out where the money is and go after it.”

SoyMeds Inc. found it in NIH and SBIR grants. It was awarded $500,000 from the National Institutes of Health in 2013 and $$1.05 million from the NIH in 2016. The company was also named the NCTA Life Science Company of the Year in 2011.

Drugs, diagnostics or vaccines produced by the SoyMeds process would be administered orally via soy milk or capsules. They would not require cold storage.

For vaccines, getting just the proteins of a virus into the body will trigger an immune response. Ingesting just the protein eliminates the potential of vaccines to cause the disease in some people. About 5 percent of people vaccinated with weakened virus for measles, mumps and rubella develop a mild of the diseases.

Soybean vaccines also do not require the expensive and rigorous purification process of traditional vaccines, greatly reducing the cost of production.

“It’s a disruptive technology,” Piller told the AgBio Summit.

First in class products

The company, which is working on a treatment for the therapeutic against the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG) funded by its latest grant.

“This grant will enable us to start looking at the stability of our lead transgenic soybean, and to look at capsulation for oral administration,” Piller, told the North Carolina Biotechnology Center earlier this year. “That’s kind of getting us on a pathway for possible safety trials.

Over the years, the company has researched the prevention of allergies from bee stings and hay fever pollen and cancer diagnostics as well.

Currently the soybeans are grown in climate controlled chambers, which limits the number of plants. But the company has established partnerships with North Carolina State University and the NC Department of Agriculture to use their greenhouses and produce greater numbers of plants.

Piller said the company needs to develop relatively inexpensive plant production facilities.

The regulatory and patent landscape is a bit uncertain, since SoyMeds products may be the first in their class, but it has successfully argued for patent protection for one of its therapies.

“We may need to change the mentality of the industry,” Piller said.

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