NEW YORK — Japanese technology giant Ricoh said Wednesday that it has acquired a nonexclusive license to CRISPR-related intellectual property controlled by ERS Genomics.
Financial and other terms of the deal, which covers the US and Japan, were not disclosed.
Ricoh's licensing of the IP comes almost two years after it acquired Elixirgen Scientific, a Baltimore-based biotech firm specializing in the use of messenger RNA and induced pluripotent stem cells for drug discovery.
Ricoh said that it aims to use the licensed CRISPR technology to create disease models that will support Elixirgen's activities.
Dublin-based ERS was founded to provide access to CRISPR-Cas9 patents held by Emmanuelle Charpentier and shared with Jennifer Doudna and the University of California, as well as with the University of Vienna. In recent months, it has granted nonexclusive licenses to this IP to StemSight, Transomic Technologies, and Applied Biological Materials, among others.