NEW YORK — ERS Genomics said on Thursday that it has signed a nonexclusive licensing deal for its CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property with Japanese nonprofit research organization Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA).
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Dublin-based ERS was founded to provide access to CRISPR-Cas9 intellectual property held by Emmanuelle Charpentier. The IP is shared with Jennifer Doudna and the University of California, and the University of Vienna. ERS has recently struck nonexclusive licensing deals for the IP with Cellular Engineering Technologies, Japan SLC, and Nippon Gene.
ERS' IP is separate from similar patents held by the Broad Institute. Earlier this year, the US Patent and Trademark Office found that the Broad's patents covering CRISPR-Cas9 in eukaryotic cells have priority over the IP held by Charpentier, the University of Vienna, and the University of California.
At the time, ERS said that the USPTO ruling does not impact any of the licenses it has issued to patents not involved in the interference proceedings, including patents covering a variety of CRISPR compositions such as ones with dual-guide and single-guide strand formats.