Sangamo licenses ZFP rights to Pfizer
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Sangamo BioSciences has licensed non-exclusive worldwide rights to its proprietary zinc finger DNA-binding proteins (ZFPs) reagents for therapeutic protein development to Pfizer. The licence permits the use of certain ZFP Nuclease (ZFN) reagents to knock out the glutamine synthetase (GS) gene in Pfizer's chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines and for the use of these ZFN-modified cells for clinical and commercial production of therapeutic proteins. Sangamo will receive an upfront payment of $3 million. The deal builds on a collaboration that Pfizer and Sangamo first initiated in 2005. "Together we've used ZFNs to generate specific GS knockouts in CHO cells to streamline the creation of MAb production cell lines," said David Brunner, vice-president of bioprocess R&D at Pfizer global biologics division.