In the beginning, there were corn and soybean and cotton - and a lot of nasty pests to go along with the crops, and a plethora of weeds to swallow up their sun.

Pesticides and herbicides have provided a temporary solution, but their toxic nature often harms the very plants they're trying to help.

It's a problem that companies like Athenix Corp. are addressing by developing ways to get rid of the bugs and the weeds without compromising the quality of the crop. But Athenix, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., also is working on a little something else that could become a big issue for the petroleum industry in years to come: biofuels.

"In fact, that is a small focus of our research, one in which we have some very interesting intellectual property on," said Nadine Carozzi, one of Athenix's four founders and the company's vice president of product development. "I personally believe quite strongly that after this first wave of genetically engineered crops, in the future, there will be plants that can be specifically used to make a lot of things like fuels and plastics that we now can only make from petroleum."

Whether the interest is biofuels or crop protection, investors seem to like Athenix; they pumped $13 million into the transgenic plant company last week via a Series C financing. The latest financing brings the total amount raised by Athenix to $33.5 million in three rounds, including an $8 million Series A raised in September 2001 and its $12.5 million Series B conducted in January 2004. The company was founded in April 2001.

"Every round is significant to a start-up company," Carozzi said, "but this particular round will take us into a lot of our product development and plant registration [filings]."

It gives Athenix about three years of cash. The company intends to use proceeds to move its products through field trials and to market. Its lead products include major crops with enhanced traits that enable them to tolerate herbicides and resist nematodes, insects and other pests.

"Our primary products are genetically engineered corn, soybean and cotton, and those would contain what we call traits," Carozzi told BioWorld Today. "Really, they're genes [from microbes] that allow you to have a different phenotype from a normal plant."

The company is making plants that are resistant to insects, which could greatly reduce the amount of insecticide used on crops, and it also is developing crops resistant to the popular herbicide, glyphosate, which is better known as Roundup. In October, Athenix reported field trial results of transgenic plants that contain glyphosate-tolerant genes, demonstrating that they can withstand 16 times the amount recommended for existing glyphosate-tolerant corn.

"You can go through and spray between the rows," Carozzi said, "and the weeds are all wiped out and your crop stays intact and happy."

Athenix expects its first product to hit the U.S. market in 2009. Similar to the FDA's new drug application process for pharmaceuticals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture governs all new agbiotech products, making sure they "don't have any harmful effect to the environment or to beneficial insects" or to the food chain, Carozzi said.

"This is a process now that's been going on for 10 years. It's well established," she said. "The first biotech crops were registered in 1995."

Carozzi was on the Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis AG team that developed the first transgenic corn, along with Athenix's president, CEO and founder, Mike Koziel. The Novartis' agricultural division, then known as Ciba-Geigy Ltd., later became Syngenta AG.

Since its 2001 founding, Athenix has formed alliances with Mertec LLC, of West Point, Iowa, a breeder and supplier of soybean seed; Eden Enterprise Inc., of Adel, Iowa, which specializes in hybrid corn; and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, of Johnston, Iowa, which promotes Iowa's corn industry.

"With the amount of money that we're getting from alliances," Carozzi said, "it may well be that we won't need any more venture funding."

The Series C round was led by Finistere Partners, of San Diego, and included Intersouth Partners, of Durham, N.C.; Polaris Venture Partners, of Waltham, Mass.; Boston Millennia Partners, of Boston; Hunt Ventures, of Dallas; and Eastman Ventures, of Kingsport, Tenn.

Athenix also is providing enhanced enzymes to increase the nutritional and energy value of feed for animals. And it is developing processes to release sugars from various biological substrates, such as corn stover, which could lead to the production of renewable resources to augment petroleum-derived materials.

The research into transgenic crops certainly has come a long way in 10 years, but within the next decade, Carozzi hopes to see biofuels replacing petroleum in the marketplace.

An energy bill passed by Congress last summer was laden with tax and other incentives for biotech companies. The bill included a provision requiring almost double the amount of plant-produced ethanol as a gasoline additive by 2010.

"I think there will be an important role for agbiotech in that area," Carozzi said.