Applied StemCell, Inc. Announces Licensing Agreement With Broad Institute For CRISPR/Cas9 Gene-Editing Technology.
Menlo Park, CA-(June 25, 2014) – Applied StemCell, Inc. (ASC) announced today that it has officially entered a non-exclusive licensing agreement with the Broad Institute for use and commercialization of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9 gene editing technology. The Broad Institute patent represents the first granted patent for use of CRISPR technology in eukaryotic cells and is based on work by Feng Zhang in a paper published in Science in 2013. CRISPR is a novel genome-engineering technology allowing multiplexed gene targeting capability including point mutation, deletion, and small DNA insertions. Mammalian genomes can be modified in a robust and high throughput (HTP) approach. This agreement gives Applied StemCell the commercial freedom to utilize the technology in its gene-editing business from in vitro cell line generation to in vivo animal model generation.
"We have generated significant research tools with our proprietary gene-editing platform technology. This robust system CRISPR is a perfect addition complementary to our current gene-editing technology platform," said Ruhong Jiang, CEO. “ASC plans to immediately expand on both isogenic human cell line and transgenic animal model generation services. We are excited to be a leading company of genome-editing industry and a company that is successfully growing through R&D collaborations based on these licensing agreements.” “The CRISPR/Cas9 technology not only empowers us to generate new cell lines and animal models, it will also allow us to further develop novel gene knock-in technologies based on CRISPR and our own proprietary TARGATT™ technology,”said Ruby Yanru Tsai, CSO, Senior Vice President, R&D and co-inventor of TARGATT™ technology. “Cas9 is revolutionizing many areas of biological research,” said Zhang, a core member of the Broad Institute and a pioneer of the CRISPR technology. “This technology has a lot of potential and we are excited to work with Applied StemCell as a partner who will use the power of genome editing to generate novel research models,” he added.
About Applied StemCell, Inc.
Applied StemCell, Inc. is a fast-growing biotechnology company providing research animal and cell line models as tools for drug discovery and diagnostics. Using our proprietary TARGATT™ gene modification technology, we generate site-specific knock-in mouse, rat and human cell line models fast and efficiently for the pharmaceutical and academic research communities. For more information please visit: www.appliedstemcell.com.
About the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods, and data openly to the entire scientific community.
Founded by MIT, Harvard, and its affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, go to http://www.broadinstitute.org.
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