Zygogen Licenses Morpholino Antisense Technology From The University of Minnesota For Use In Zebrafish

ATLANTA, July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Zygogen, LLC, a biotechnology company that utilizes zebrafish for drug discovery, today announced that it has an exclusive license from the University of Minnesota to use morpholino antisense technology in zebrafish. Morpholino antisense, recognized as the best-validated system for effective inhibition of gene function in zebrafish, provides a rapid method for target validation in a living vertebrate model system.

The terms of the agreement include license and royalty payments to the University of Minnesota, which owns the patent for the zebrafish morpholino antisense technology. In addition, Zygogen has the right to sub-license the technology.

"We are pleased to license morpholino technology to validate potential targets," said Nina Sawczuk, co-founder and CEO of Zygogen. "A major application of our zebrafish platform is performing rapid gene knock-downs in our proprietary Z-Tag(SM) and Z-Lipotrack(SM) zebrafish models. There is a high degree of genetic conservation between mammals and zebrafish. Since zebrafish gene knock-downs can be performed in weeks rather than months, zebrafish are being adopted for target validation studies."

Zygogen uses its proprietary zebrafish technology platform to provide in vivo preclinical drug discovery services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Services include target validation, automated compound screening and toxicity testing.

As vertebrates, zebrafish embryos have become a valuable tool for obtaining live animal data early in the drug discovery process. Large numbers of embryos can be arrayed in multi-well plates with very small quantities of drug, providing a less expensive and faster screening alternative to mammalian models.

By interrupting gene activity in zebrafish, morpholino antisense technology helps identify medically relevant genes whose protein products may be targets of future pharmaceutical drugs. Using specific antisense oligonucleotides to block either translation or splicing of targeted mRNA molecules in zebrafish, morpholino technology enables the functional analysis of targeted genes.

"Zygogen provides access to zebrafish technology to a variety of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. As academic zebrafish tools and models are developed, Zygogen actively in-licenses intellectual property to maintain our leadership position in zebrafish technology, and to consolidate the critical elements for a broad commercial zebrafish platform," said Sawczuk.

The U.S. patents and other foreign patent applications for morpholino technology cover compositions and methods of making and using zebrafish with gene expression that have been modified using morpholino antisense molecules. The patent was initially filed in 2000 by Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D., director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Transposon Research, and associate head of the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota, along with co-inventors Aidas Nasevicius, Ph.D., Hyon Kim, Ph.D., and Saulius Sumanas, Ph.D. The University of Minnesota retains the academic research rights to morpholino technology.

About Zygogen, LLC

Founded in 1999, Atlanta-based Zygogen LLC is a pioneer in the commercialization of zebrafish technology. Zygogen partners with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to provide automated zebrafish screening services using its Z-Tag and Z-Lipotrack technologies. Zygogen established the first-ever pharmaceutical partnership using zebrafish for drug discovery (Aventis Pharma, 2002) and continues to be a leader in zebrafish preclinical drug discovery services, including rapid target validation, compound screening and toxicity testing.

Z-Tag enables Zygogen to automate zebrafish compound screening and obtain quantitative data by designing transgenic zebrafish with fluorescently labeled organs and pathways relevant to human disease and toxicity. For more information, visit: http://www.zygogen.com .

CONTACT: Nina Sawczuk of Zygogen, LLC, +1-404-523-7309, nina@zygogen.com ;Bruce Erickson of University of Minnesota, +1-612-625-2354,erick210@umn.edu ; or Katie Brazel of Fleishman-Hillard, +1-404-739-0150,brazelk@fleishman.com

Web site: http://www.zygogen.com/