NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Broad Institute has granted GE Healthcare and Sigma-Aldrich non-exclusive licenses to intellectual property covering CRISPR/Cas9 for research applications, the companies announced separately today.
Under the arrangements, both companies will have access to the CRISPR IP portfolio, which includes patents related to the use of the gene-editing technology in eukaryotic cells that was pioneered in the lab of Broad researcher Feng Zhang.
According to GE Healthcare, the Broad license will allow it to expand its recently launched Dharmacon Edit-R CRISPR/Cas9 gene-engineering system for creating permanent and heritable gene knockouts in cells.
Sigma-Aldrich, meantime, stated that with the license, it will be able to create pre-designed or customizable individual lentiviral CRISPR clones and off-the-shelf or custom lentiviral CRISPR pools. The firm also noted that it already serves as the exclusive distributor for Broad's Mission shRNA and ORF libraries.
Specific terms of the licensing deals were not disclosed.