ERS Genomics licenses CRISPR patents to Cambridge University spin-out
The company that provides access to CRISPR/Cas9 IP owned by researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier, ERS Genomics, has signed a patent licensing deal with DefiniGEN, a spin-out from the University of Cambridge, UK.
ERS announced the deal today, November 1, saying that DefiniGEN will use its iPSC (induced Pluripotent Stem Cell) platform with ERS’s CRISPR technology to develop human cell models to support the pre-clinical development of therapeutics.
DefiniGEN was founded in 2013 to commercialise OptiDIFF, a stem cell production platform developed at the University of Cambridge. The company says that when its technologies are applied in drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies benefit from more predictive in vitro cell products, enabling the development of safer and more effective treatments.
“The company’s gene-editing technical portfolio has been further strengthened by licensing of this cutting-edge technology and will allow us to produce a range of innovative and unique pre-clinical human models for the drug discovery sector,” said Marcus Yeo, CEO of DefiniGEN.
“These tools will enable our customers to optimise the pre-clinical development of therapeutics for multiple rare liver diseases, Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” he added.
Eric Rhodes, CEO of ERS Genomics, added: “The outlook for gene-edited iPSCs to become a major contributor to new drug discovery and safer more effective treatments is tremendous.”
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
The deal was announced just two days after the University of California revealed that it has been awarded another CRISPR patent (US number 10,113,167), which was co-discovered by Charpentier.
The patent is directed to RNA guides that, when combined with the Cas9 protein, are effective at honing in on and editing genes, with these RNA/protein combinations acting like “precision-targeted gene-editing scissors”, said the announcement.
According to the University of California, this CRISPR/Cas9 DNA-targeting complex is one of the fundamental molecular technologies behind the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. The complex was discovered by Jennifer Doudna and Charpentier, who works at the University of Vienna.
Doudna, Charpentier and their universities have been locked in a high-profile dispute with the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in the US over CRISPR technology. In September, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with Broad, finding that the research institute is entitled to disputed patents covering CRISPR technology. It rejected the universities’ challenge in the case.
The university confirmed that the recently-granted ‘167 patent is not involved in these proceedings.
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