Cellectis, the French Genome engineering specialist, has announced that it has signed an exclusive license agreement with the University of Minnesota that grants Cellectis the worldwide right to use inventions related to TAL effector-mediated DNA recognition and cleavage. This revolutionary approach for the targeted modification of genomes was developed by the University of Minnesota and Iowa State University.

The exclusive license granted to Cellectis covers all uses of the technology in any field. The technology has shown promising results in Genome engineering and is complementary to Cellectis’ proprietary meganuclease technology.

“Cellectis is making further progress in implementing its external growth policy by investing the capital raised in 2009 in the most promising technology, products and human resources that add value to, and are aligned with, our core business.” explained André Choulika, CEO of Cellectis. “Our teams are already leveraging this new technology and the first research reagents based on it are expected to come onto the market within twelve months”.

Cellectis improves life by applying its Genome engineering expertise to a broad range of applications including agriculture, bioresearch and human therapeutics.