"Cellectis has registered significant scientific progress over Q4 2007 and the first two months of 2008", pointed out Frédéric Pâques, Cellectis’ CSO. "We have delivered two new MRSs to a research group at Children’s Hospital Boston and two other MRSs to a group at the Harvard Institute of Medicine. We are building up a good stock of products and the results are growing incrementally, both in-house and via our collaborative work - confirming our products’ potential. We are currently formalizing these results for inclusion in new scientific publications".
About Cellectis
Cellectis SA (www.cellectis.com) is a world-leading company in genome engineering and genome surgery. The company is focused on developing and producing custom meganucleases for in vivo DNA surgery and also provides new tools for rational reverse genetics and targeted recombination. Cellectis' products induce unique, site-directed, double-strand DNA breaks in living cells and can be used in a wide range of biotechnological and therapeutic applications.
A strong patent portfolio Cellectis holds a 148 patent and patent application portfolio, providing the company with a strong position in the field of homologous recombination (3 issued US patents) and meganucleases and uses thereof (18 issued US patents), both naturally-occurring and with engineered specificity. A significant part of this portfolio has been exclusively licensed by Institut Pasteur, which spun off the company in 2000.
Institut Pasteur has a long history in exploiting methods of homologous recombination with groups pioneering the field - a major scientific breakthrough (Nobel Prize 2007) and is today the assignee of cornerstone patents from the late 80's in this field. The group which discovered meganucleases and published founding works on the I-SceI homing endonucleases (leading to the constitution of Cellectis proprietary patent portfolio) is from Institut Pasteur.
A strong scientific background Research groups involved in the discovery of meganucleases at Institut Pasteur and Cellectis have published tens of founding publications in prestigious peer-review papers such as Cell, Nature, Science, PNAS, JBC and JMB. In 2007 alone, Cellectis published 5 important scientific publications in peer-review journals, with a further 2 papers since the beginning of 2008.
A technology that delivers Cellectis currently holds an incremental pipeline of 18 meganucleases with modified specificity (derived from the I-CreI meganuclease), with applications in: - Therapeutics - major indications are severe inborn genetic diseases, DNA virus infections, transplantation and cancer. - Agricultural biotechnology - the major targets are crop improvement, biofuels and biofibers. - Biomanufacturing - the major indications are cell line and recombinant protein improvement. - BioTools - the major indication is research kit development for pharmacogenomic studies in general and drug screening in particular.
A partner-oriented strategy The company has formed 48 industrial partnerships with pharmaceutical companies (Astra-Zeneca, GSK, Shire), agricultural biotechnology groups (Limagrain, Bayer, BASF, DuPont-Pioneer HiBred) and healthcare-focused biotech firms (Genentech, Transgenics, Lexicon). Cellectis contributes to over 20 academic partnerships, including those with the Institut Gustave Roussy cancer research centre, the Paris Children's Hospital (France), Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard Gene Therapy Initiative (USA).
Financing The company raised over €24m in an IPO on NYSE-Euronext Alternext (in February 2007), in order to increase its annual meganuclease production capacity to 20 by the end of 2008. To date, the company has raised over €40m in both private and public rounds of financing. Cellectis is listed on the NYSE-Euronext Alternext market (ticker code: ALCLS). For more information on Cellectis, visit our web site: www.cellectis.com.
Practical information: ISIN Code FR0010425595 Ticker code ALCLS
AMF (http://www.amf-france.org) and Cellectis (http://www.cellectis.com). For additional information, please contact: Cellectis S.A. Marc Le Bozec, CFO +33 (0)1 41 83 99 00 investors@cellectis.com Alize RP Caroline Carmagnol +33 (0)6 64 18 99 59 caroline@alizerp.com
