NEW YORK – Crown Bioscience said on Thursday that it has signed separate five-year portfolio license agreements with the National Cancer Institute and the nonprofit biorepository organization ATCC that will grant the company access to the institutions' cell lines.
Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
CrownBio, which sells the XenoSelect and OmniScreen cell-based screening panels, said its clients will now also benefit from having access to an extended portfolio of cell lines. The license agreement with ATCC grants CrownBio expedited access to more than 140 cell lines and their associated datasets, as well as future access to an additional 4,000 cell lines through an umbrella licensing structure. The agreement with the NCI grants CrownBio access to 100 cell lines available through the NCI Repository of Tumors and Tumor Cell Lines, and other sources that were developed in NCI labs, the company said.
"These new agreements will enable us to offer our clients expanded and prioritized cell line availability and supply," CrownBio CSO Henry Li said in a statement, adding that the deals ensure CrownBio's customers have access to "a range of in vitro and in vivo models for drug discovery."