genOway licenses the Flex technology rights to HHMI for the distribution of its AAV FLEX

The Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will be able to distribute its Adeno Associated Viruses (AAV) to both academic and industrial researchers and join its collaborators with the necessary FTO.

Lyon, France – May 27, 2019 - genOway (Euronext-Growth^®: ALGEN; ISIN: FR0004053510), the biotechnology company dedicated to the development of genetically modified mouse, rat and cell models, announced today that it has licensed certain intellectual property rights to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (“HHMI”).

The Flex technology, also called DIO cassette for Double-floxed Inverse ORF/Orientation, allows scientists to induce expression of a gene of interest or a reporter gene at an appropriate time and in a specific tissue.

With this agreement, the Janelia Research Campus of HHMI will now be able to provide both academic and industrial communities with its Cre-dependent AAVs utilizing the DIO cassette. Such AAVs are useful tools widely used for neurobiology applications such as Optogenetics, Chemogenetics (DREADDs) and biosensing.

Gaining the necessary freedom to operate for its researchers and collaborators is of major importance for the research done by the HHMI Janelia Research Campus with its AAV tools.

Alexandre Fraichard, general manager and founder of genOway, declared: “We are proud to provide a renowned institution with a license on our Flex intellectual property. There is more and more interest for this technology as the most reliable technology to achieve a time and tissue specific expression of a gene of interest. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is the first institute to access this technology and we are delighted to help them become a reference provider for the scientific community.”

Michael Perham, Director of Innovations and Externals Relations at HHMI Janelia Research Campus, declared: “As a collaborative tool-generating research institute, we are pleased to gain the rights to use and disseminate the AAV FLEX technology to our scientific colleagues around the world.”

For profit organizations interested in obtaining and using the FLEX technology should contact genOway directly for a commercial license.

FLEX technology is covered by US patent no. 7,074,611 and EP patent no. 1,383,891, whose inventors are Prof. Pierre Chambon, Dr. Frank Schnütgen and Dr. Norbert Ghyselinck at the Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (France). GenOway has acquired exclusive distribution rights in 2010.

About genOway

genOway (Euronext-Growth^®: ALGEN) is a biotechnology company developing genetically modified and high value-added research models for the bio-pharmaceutical, chemical, agrochemical and food industries as well as academic research. With highly qualified scientific personnel, the company has a workforce of 95 people and operates in 28 countries in Europe, Asia and North America, supplying more than 275 customers. It is a market leader in terms of both size and customer portfolios. The company’s development is founded upon both a broad and exclusive technology platform as well as strong intellectual property rights combining patents and licensing agreements. Taking advantage of the global trend toward outsourcing the production of genetically modified research models, genOway has signed contracts with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry (Janssen R&D, GSK, Pfizer, etc.) and with prestigious academic research centers including the UK’s King’s College and University of Manchester; Harvard, Caltech and the National Institutes of Health in the US; the Institut Pasteur in France; and NGFN and the Max Planck Institutes in Germany. For more information, visit our website www.genoway.com.

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