NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Sigma-Aldrich today said that it has licensed worldwide rights to Kyoto University's induced pluripotent stem cell patent portfolio.
Under terms of the deal, iPS Academia Japan, which managed the patents and technology arising from Shinya Yamanaka's research at Kyoto University, will receive a license fee from Sigma-Aldrich. Financial and other terms of the license were not disclosed.
"Our license with Kyoto University grants us the freedom to operate under Kyoto University's induced pluripotent stem cell patent portfolio in the increasingly important field of stem-cell based research and development," David Smoller, chief scientific officer of Sigma-Aldrich, said in a statement. "Using the Kyoto iPS cell technology and our zinc finger protein technologies, we hope to generate stable, defined sets of cells and subsequently derived tissues whose predictive power will allow us to develop a new paradigm in assay development."
Cellular Dynamics also holds a non-exclusive license to the Kyoto iPS cell patents.