Romainville, France
May 28, 2007
Cellectis SA, the French
rational genome engineering company, today announced its first
milestone in the framework of its collaboration with
Bayer CropScience
on uses of Cellectis’ proprietary custom-made Meganuclease
technology in plants to develop products for use in agriculture.
Meganucleases are a proprietary
genome engineering technology developed by Cellectis that allows
highly precise ‘editing’ of genetic sequences. They consist of
sequence-specific endonucleases with large (>18-24 bp)
recognition sites. This high specificity ensures Meganucleases
can bind and cut at a single point in a chosen genome without
the imprecision associated with most other forms of gene
modification. Custom-made Meganucleases can be designed for very
specific gene targeting applications, which include genomic
sequence addition, modification or deletion
Cellectis completed a key
milestone by successfully designing and delivering engineered
Meganucleases specifically customized to recognize chosen
targets in crop genomes. Targets and terms of the collaboration
were not disclosed.
“We are pleased to meet this key
milestone in our program. This comforts our strategy and our
collaboration with Bayer.” Commented David J.D. Sourdive, Vice
President Corporate Development of Cellectis. “We are delivering
as planned and are thus successfully implementing our business
model.”
About the agreement
Meganucleases can induce precise, surgical changes in crop
genomes and have the capacity to be the next break-through
enablement for increasing crop yield and creating new
plant-based products for Bayer CropScience’s customers.
Agronomic applications are a clear segment of the Cellectis’
markets and the collaboration with Bayer is part of its efforts
to see that its proprietary Meganuclease technology be
implemented in plants. Cellectis’ achievement is both a
milestone in the collaboration between the two companies and is
also in direct line with its strategy.
Cellectis SA is a world-leading
company in genome engineering and genome surgery. It focuses on
developing new tools for rational reverse genetics and targeted
recombination. In particular, Cellectis designs meganucleases
(small proteins) that cut DNA at a highly precise chosen
location in a genome and nowhere else. Genomic DNA breaks are
repaired naturally by the DNA maintenance system present in all
living organisms. Cellectis combines the ability of
meganucleases to cut DNA at a single, chosen location with
natural DNA repair, in order to offer new-generations products
for a wide spectrum of applications:
Human health: Meganucleases that target a gene responsible for a
genetic disease are transferred into human cells together with a
DNA repair matrix which includes the correct sequence for the
mutated gene. After the DNA break occurs (which takes just a few
minutes) the right sequence is copied into the genome of the
patients’ cells and the gene is thus repaired. This process -
termed ‘genome surgery’ – has a defined time-frame of action
limited with permanent effects. All other transferred material
is degraded by natural mechanisms.
Agrobiotech: The same process used in human healthcare can be
applied to plants, with the objective of replacing one gene by
another, modifying the gene or shutting it down. The
applications developed using Cellectis’ technology are
essentially focused on improving agronomic features of crops,
producing new generations of biofuels and developing better
biofibers.
BioProduction: BioProduction is the production of therapeutic
proteins and antibodies using bacteria, yeasts or
mammalian cells (mouse, hamster and human cells). This
multibillion market has an annual growth rate of over 15%.
Cellectis has developed meganucleases that cut the DNA of major
production cell lines used in BioProduction, thus enabling the
end users (contract manufacturing organizations and
biopharmaceutical companies) to shorten their cell line
engineering processes, stabilize production yields and thus
improve the quality and features of the final product.
In the long term, Cellectis intends to become the global leader
in genome engineering. To this end, Cellectis is seeking to
establish its rational genome engineering approach (based on
meganucleases with modified specificity) as an industry
standard.
In the short and medium term, Cellectis intends to achieve
profitability by commercializing its technology (primarily in
the agrobiotech and bioproduction fields) and, in parallel,
building its own therapeutic pipeline (thus providing
shareholders with medium-and long-term value).
To date, Cellectis has entered into more than 45 deals on its
genome engineering technologies with major players in the
pharma, biotech and agrobiotech industries. Cellectis is listed
on the Euronext Alternext market (ticker code: ALCLS).
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