Ricoh strengthens US unit with CRISPR gene editing licence
Japanese imaging and electronics firm has acquired non-exclusive licence from ERS Genomics | Technology will be used by Elixirgen Scientific, acquired by Ricoh in 2022.
Ricoh has acquired access to CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology patents through a non-exclusive licence with ERS Genomics, it was announced yesterday (March 13).
The agreement, which covers the US and Japan, will allow the Japanese imaging and electronics company to apply CRISPR/Cas9 technology to the development of disease models which it said would lead to shorter drug development timelines and increased success rates.
This work would be done through Ricoh’s subsidiary Elixirgen Scientific, a US biotech based in Baltimore that it acquired in 2022.
Ricoh said Elixirgen possessed “core technologies” in the quick and efficient differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into various types of cells, and also had expertise in messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) design, production and management.
Differentiating iPS cells into a variety of cell types is used to pre-confirm the effects of candidate drugs on patients with various genetic backgrounds.
These core technologies would be combined with CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology to create “highly reliable disease models, including those for rare diseases”, according to the Japanese company.
Patent portfolio spans 80 countries
ERS Genomics provides access to CRISPR/Cas9 IP based on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, including through non-exclusive licences to research and sell products covered by a gene editing patent portfolio.
The Dublin-headquartered biotech holds over 85 issued patents in more than 80 countries, and is represented by Summit Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Sumitomo, in Japan.
In January this year, the company announced that it had granted a non-exclusive CRISPR/Cas9 licence to Finnish company StemSight, which develops stem cell based therapies for blindness.
The previous month, ERS Genomics fended off an invalidation challenge to Japanese Patent JP6692856, which was upheld for a second time by the Japanese Patent Office.
The company has faced a battle over inventorship in the US, with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ruling in 2022 that certain patents covering the gene-editing technology belonged to the Broad Institute, owned by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
