NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Sangamo BioSciences today said that it has licensed to Pfizer the use of certain zinc finger protein nuclease reagents for use in clinical and commercial production of therapeutic proteins.
The Richmond, Calif.-based firm said that it had licensed to Pfizer non-exclusive, worldwide rights to use the reagents to permanently eliminate the glutamine synthetase gene in Chinese Hamster Ovary cell lines. The cells will be used for producing the therapeutic proteins.
Sangamo will receive an upfront payment of $3 million from Pfizer under terms of the pact. The license is royalty-free, Sangamo noted.
“Based upon our ability to design ZFNs to any gene, we believe that this is one of many future agreements we may establish, applying our ZFN technology in the commercial production of protein-based pharmaceuticals,” Edward Lanphier, Sangamo’s president and CEO, said in a statement.