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Transgenomic Selling Surveyor Nuclease Technology to IDT for at Least $4.25M

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Transgenomic today announced an agreement to sell the rights to it Surveyor Nuclease technology and assets to Integrated DNA Technologies for a minimum of $4.25 million.

IDT will make a $3.65 million upfront payment with additional payments totaling at least $600,000 in the first year of the agreement. Rights to the Surveyor patents, license, technology, know-how, and trademarks, and all product inventory will be transferred to IDT.

IDT will exclusively sublicense the rights for all clinical and diagnostic applications of the technology back to Transgenomic. Surveyor, which is used to detect mutations and polymorphisms in DNA from different organisms, was originally developed by Fox Chase Cancer Center and licensed exclusively to Transgenomic. The technology includes a "proprietary nuclease enzyme that cleaves DNA at points where any type of DNA sequence variance exists," Transgenomic said.

"The sale of Surveyor Nuclease technology to IDT for the non-core research market allows us to focus more of our resources on commercialization efforts in our Patient Testing, Biomarker Identification, and Genetic Assays and Platforms business units," Transgenomic President and CEO Paul Kinnon said in a statement. "By licensing back exclusive rights to clinical and diagnostic uses of the technology, we have ensured we will have continued access to Surveyor in high-value clinical and pharmaceutical services applications."

The sale of the asset will also help Transgenomic fund further development and commercialization of its ICE-COLD PCR technology for detecting and monitoring actionable mutations in cancer patients with non-invasive liquid biopsies, Kinnon added.