Cellectis, a biopharmaceutical company focused on oncology & the genome engineering specialist, and genOway, the animal model specialist, has signed an exclusive agreement under which genOway becomes the exclusive provider of Cellectis’ homologous recombination technology for research applications in genetically modified rodents. Cellectis will remain the partner for any other applications such as bioproduction and therapeutics.

Financial conditions were not disclosed.

genOway is recognized by the industry as the leader in high-value research models for candidate drug evaluation. Over the past few years, genOway has developed the most advanced methods for generating innovative approaches, which combine exclusive technologies - Internal Ribosome Entry Site (IRES), Recombinase Mediated Cassette Exchange (RMCE), Tetracycline, etc, with proprietary technologies (QuickKin, 2in1, etc), proprietary software and expertise.

This technology is covered by the WO 90/11354 family of patents owned by Institut Pasteur and exclusively licensed to Cellectis. This generation of high-value genetically modified rodent models, including humanized models, is a major breakthrough. Cellectis’ technology is ranked as the primary tool in genetically modified rodent development by both academic and industrial scientists. Previously, Cellectis was the only source of rights in homologous recombination technology. The solutions genOway now offers respond fully to the needs of the industrial and academic institutions that require a single access to key technologies.

“We are very happy with this exclusive partnership with Cellectis. Both teams have worked intensively on this agreement, taking the market needs into account. This complete and exclusive agreement is the solution the market was waiting for,” said Alexandre Fraichard, genOway CEO. “Access to this technology enables us to complete our portfolio of exclusive technologies and solutions and to guarantee our customers that we’ll provide them with a research model which exactly fits their needs.”

“Other transgenic companies and internal facilities only provide them with a model they can develop”, added Alexandre Fraichard. “We are the only transgenic company providing a guaranteed freedom to operate. It is essential for industrial researchers, and increasingly for leading academic centres, to guarantee that they have the freedom to use their models. This is the only way to secure their future rights to results. By providing both the technologies and the freedom to operate, genOway has become the only relevant partner for rodent models.”

“The collaboration between genOway and Cellectis fits within our mission to enable scientists to access our technologies,” said André Choulika, Cellectis’ chairman and CEO. “This new agreement with genOway is a major step forward in our strategy. genOway is the best exclusive partner for the research rodent model arena. The Company’s focus is on allogeneic cancer immunotherapy using TALENTM engineered T-Cell together with Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) for liquid tumours.”

This agreement will enable genOway to exclusively provide academic and industry scientists with complete secure access to Cellectis’ homologous recombination technology for use in rodent models.

genOway will develop and sell research models using homologous recombination technology. Customers of genOway will have complete freedom to operate for their research programmes including pharmaceutical research.

Thousands of research models have been developed using homologous recombination technology and are available in either laboratories or repositories. genOway plans to enable scientists to access these resources with the necessary rights.

A significant proportion of scientists are using models developed using homologous recombination technology with no rights to do so; either because the models were created by in-house facilities or because they were purchased from transgenic companies that had no rights to transfer freedom to operate to the end-user. genOway will now license the required freedom to operate (for past and/or future use) to the end-users. genOway and Cellectis are strongly committed to enabling scientists to benefit from this technology and to prohibiting unauthorized use.