Munich, September 20, 2012 — Icon Genetics GmbH (ICON), Munich/Halle, Germany, has announced that the Company has entered into a license agreement with the Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) and the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich, UK, that allows TSL and JIC to use in its research ICON’s high-throughput DNA Assembly Platform known as ‘Golden Gate Cloning’.
Golden Gate Cloning technology is a set of gene splicing technologies that allows for a rapid, precise and high through-put DNA engineering that can be applied in a hierarchical manner to shuffle genes, to assemble coding parts, expression units, multi-gene constructs and whole plasmids at a high speed and economically. The technology will accelerate and simplify TSL and JICi’s pioneering research in many areas including synthetic biology and biotechnology.
Professor Yuri Gleba, ICON’s CEO said: “TSL and JIC are no doubt among the best world research centers in the area of plant molecular biology and biotechnology, and ICON benefitted enormously from having both of its main managers Dr. Sylvestre Marillonnet, our former research Director and the main inventor of the technology, and Dr. Victor Klimyuk, our COO, trained and worked at TSL in Professor Jonathan Jones’ Laboratory before joining ICON. We would like this relationship between academia and businesses to be truly mutually beneficial.”
Professor Jonathan Jones of TSL said “I’m delighted at the outstanding success of my former colleagues now at Icon and their willingness to make their pioneering technology available to the academic community in Norwich.”
Professor Sophien Kamoun, head of TSL said: “We are excited about our collaboration with Icon Genetics in the area of synthetic biology. We are looking forward to upgrade our molecular cloning vectors to integrate the improvements offered by the Icon vector systems. These will help us in our mission to conduct cutting edge research in plant biology and deliver solution to crop diseases.”
Professor Dale Sanders, Director of JIC said: “We are delighted to have access to this state-of-the-art technology from Icon Genetics. The opportunities offered by these novel gene splicing technologies will help keep JIC at the forefront of synthetic biology and biotechnology research and will impact on our ability to deliver on our mission that includes discovery and development of novel bioactives.”
About ICON:
Icon Genetics, a plant biotechnology company, is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Nomad Bioscience GmbH, Munich, Germany. The Company discovers and develops new biopharmaceuticals and high-value protein products using green plants as production hosts. ICON offers new plant manufacturing technologies which address speed, yield, precision, expression control and safety of product manufacturing in plants. ICON operates its own cGMP-compliant manufacturing facility in Halle, Germany. ICON’s own pipeline includes several ’biobetter’ anti-cancer antibodies (pre-clinical stage).
About The Sainsbury Laboratory:
TSL is a charitable company and a world leader in plant science. It is based on the Norwich Research Park and closely linked to the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, University of East Anglia and the John Innes Centre. TSL is dedicated to making fundamental discoveries about plants and how they interact with microbes and viruses and favours daring, long-term research over work that could be equally well carried out elsewhere. The main goals of the Laboratory are:
•To make fundamental discoveries in the science of plant-microbe interactions
•To build on fundamental scientific research and deliver science solutions that reduce crop losses to important diseases
•To provide an outstanding training environment for plant scientists
For more information please visit www.tsl.ac.uk.
About the John Innes Centre:
The John Innes Centre, www.jic.ac.uk, is a world-leading research centre based on the Norwich Research Park www.norwichresearchpark.com. The JIC’s mission is to generate knowledge of plants and microbes through innovative research, to train scientists for the future, and to apply its knowledge to benefit agriculture, human health and well-being, and the environment. JIC delivers world class bioscience outcomes leading to wealth and job creation, and generating high returns for the UK economy. JIC is one of eight institutes that receive strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and received a total of £27.5M investment in 2011-12.