Verne Bio brings scientific rigor to cannabis cultivation

Dr. Nathan Johnson, Ph.D., is no stranger to complexity. With a background in bioinformatics, cancer research, and a résumé that includes institutions like Harvard Medical School and Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Johnson has spent his career decoding biological puzzles.

Johnson, who now serves as president and CEO of Verne Bio, has turned that expertise toward cannabis — with a mission to make cultivation cleaner, more predictable, and less reactive. Greenway recently spoke to Johnson about his mission and how Verne Bio is helping cannabis cultivators stay ahead of operational catastrophe.

For Johnson, who grew up in Missouri, the growth of the state’s cannabis industry is both exciting and an opportunity to ensure that the operations in his home state are among the best and safest in the nation.

“Kansas City is where I grew up, and then Springfield is where I went to undergrad, and then Columbia is where I went to graduate school. So I’m very familiar with Missouri. My parents still live in Clark, Missouri,” Johnson said.

His academic and professional credentials are extensive. “My background is dual Ph.D.s, one’s in genetic engineering… and then I switched careers to what’s called bioinformatics, which is essentially taking biological or sequencing data and merging that with computer science or AI,” he explained.

Before launching Verne Bio, Johnson’s work was rooted in cancer biology and bioinformatics — fields that eventually brought him to cannabis.

“I worked at Harvard Medical School, doing cancer research, and worked in pharmaceutical areas in Boston, literally trying to figure out how to cure cancer,” he said. “And then I got exposed to cannabis when I met some people using cannabis to treat their cancer symptoms. So it got me really curious and I wanted to join the industry.”

That curiosity led him to shift focus and identify a major gap in cannabis cultivation: the lack of tools and standards common in other agricultural sectors.

“While I would love to go after cannabis as a medicine, there’s still a lot of details that we don’t know,” Johnson said. “We saw the pain points of people not able to have all the tools that would be expected in agriculture. So we decided — why not build them for cannabis?”

What Verne Bio does

Verne Bio is, as Johnson put it, similar in model to fractional leadership roles seen in other industries. “You can have fractional CFOs, you can have fractional CEOs… There’s not really a part-time company that does plant health management. There’s not really a part-time company that helps become your own lab in the facility. And that’s exactly what we can offer is to help with all those things,” he said.

Founded in 2020, Verne Bio acts as a third-party verifier and fractional plant health management partner for cannabis cultivators, helping to understand and address issues from biology to IPM (Integrated Pest Management).

“What we’ve been doing for five years now is trying to help everybody grow better, grow more efficiently, and try to reduce the risk of failing the crop because of mold, mildew, poplighting, and viroid, things of that nature,” Johnson said.

Verne Bio’s role is both consultative and practical. “The secret sauce that we have is that we use tech to manage everything. We have a lab that’s attached to our company… we have a team that comes in and does sampling. We have a team that comes in and audits the SOPs. We have a team that manages all the data,” Johnson said. “We organize that into a dashboard for the client to help them understand this is what’s happening.”

A closer look at industry-wide issues

Verne Bio often steps in when cultivators are already facing significant problems. “We usually get hired because they have some sort of infection that they’re dealing with. Whether it’s rats, powdery mildew, hop latent viroid – they have some sort of problem,” Johnson said.

Many issues stem from what Johnson calls “dirty genetics” — plant materials introduced without proper screening. “Once you see a problem on a plant, that plant’s already well infected and it’s now infected everything around it,” he said.

He explained that cultivators often rotate a large percentage of their crop for consumer demand, unknowingly introducing pathogens into the facility. “The number one culprit is dirty genetics that have come in. You saw a really awesome genetic at some cup, you really love it, you got a cut from your buddy… now you’re dealing with six months or a year of having to kill plants.”

While there are multiple remediation methods available to address many of these issues, Johnson is still wary of methods like radiation treatment to solve microbial issues post-harvest.

   

“Radiation is a band-aid. It’s a symptom of a bigger problem,” he said. “The radiation just killed the organism. It does not kill the toxin that the organism made while it was growing.”

“There are several mold and mildew species that grow on cannabis that do make different toxins… What’s not as well studied or well understood is what else is out there because there are only a few things that they test for, but there’s millions and millions of these organisms out there,” he continued. “For example, Fusarium is a common infection for cannabis plants. And there are Fusarium species that we’re starting to find that actually do make these toxins that we’re talking about, which is something that wasn’t really known before with cannabis,” Johnson said.

Many issues stem from what Johnson calls “dirty genetics” — plant materials introduced without proper screening. “Once you see a problem on a plant, that plant’s already well infected and it’s now infected everything around it,” he said.

Johnson shared a case where radiation failed: “It actually turned out that it was a radiation-loving bacteria. So the more radiation you gave it, it was like, hey, wonderful.”

Johnson, doesn’t single out radiation – feels similarly about all post-harvest solutions.

Instead, he advocates for more sustainable solutions, and treating the cultivation environment. “The idea is if you can kill those spores before they even get to your cannabis plants, it’s a little bit easier to manage than having to irradiate or ozone the flower.” Johnson explained.

Proactive action

“Being reactive is going to cost you money. Being proactive is going to help you save money in the long run,” Johnson said. “It will give you the ability to actually take a weekend off… If you’re constantly in the mode of reacting to the next problem that’s going to show up, your work-life balance is going to be really tough.”

He encourages operators to test their weakest link. “Work with us. We always like to say, ‘Give us your worst facility. Give us your worst system. Show us. Let’s just show you how you can improve this.’ Because it shouldn’t be reactive. It should be proactive.”

Johnson says the most successful cannabis companies are those that can predict and prevent problems before they manifest. “You should never see a plant get sick, visually speaking. It should show up in the test first… because once you see it in a plant, that means there’s a bigger problem at stake.”

In a volatile industry where operators are increasingly scrutinized and margins are tight, Johnson said the difference between profitability and failure is often in the unseen.

“The companies that own the market are going to be the ones who are most efficient. If I can grow for $100 a pound and my competitor can do $300 or more, guess what? I can sell cheaper and it doesn’t hurt me,” he said.

For Johnson, breaking the cycle of reactivity is the key. He advises operators to commit to better practices and invest now even if it stretches a company’s spend. “The reality is a lot of them don’t. They’re just fighting fires left and right. If you’re constantly spending all your extra money on dealing with these fires, how are you ever going to improve your overall operation? It’s going to be hard if you can’t. At some point, you’re going to be forced to fix the problem or start over.”

“The worst case that we have seen is in Canada, it cost them about $6 million to reset everything. Because they had to rip out the lines, they had to rip out the trays, every plant, HVAC, they had to rip out everything – because it was such a bad infection, they couldn’t get rid of it. It’s not usually that bad, but it can get bad, and it can really hurt the bottom line.”

With its science-first approach and commitment to empowering cultivators, Verne Bio aims to make sure those warnings are no longer ignored.

To learn more about Johnson and the Verne Bio team visit vernebio.com

Brandon Dunn contributed to this article.