Cellectis bioresearch adds Celonic’s High-Producer CEMAX® Cell Line to Portfolio

The contract biomanufacturing organization Celonic AG and the genome customization company Cellectis bioresearch, have announced the signature of a commercial license agreement on Celonic’s patented meganuclease-based CEMAX® technology.

The license agreement will enable Cellectis bioresearch to sell kits using CEMAX® technology for research and in vitro screening purposes. Celonic retains the rights to use the technology for the generation of cell-lines in the production of bio-therapeutics.

Marc Le Bozec, CEO of Cellectis bioresearch, commented: "Cellectis bioresearch is very pleased to add a new product to its cellular Genome Positioning System® line. The new cGPS® CHO-S CEMAX® kit provides scientists with a reproducible, straightforward tool for generating high-producer suspension CHO cells".

Dr. Andreas Herrmann, CEO of Celonic, added: “We are delighted that Cellectis BioResearch will be leveraging the market potential of our CEMAX® technology for research and screening purposes. Celonic will exclusively focus on the deployment of CEMAX® in our core business area – the production of therapeutic proteins”.

About CEMAX®:
High-producer cells have become a major requirement for recombinant protein production. Most current methods rely on random transgenesis followed by extensive screening for favorable transgenic integration into highly transcriptionally active genomic loci ("hot spots"). In the course of their long standing collaboration, scientists at Celonic and Cellectis have identified a "hot spot" for the high-yield production of recombinant proteins, which has culminated in the production of a master producer cell line bearing a tagged “hot spot”. Any gene of interest can be reproducibly targeted into the same "hot spot" via meganuclease-catalyzed recombination.