Caribou Biosciences and DuPont have jointly announced that they have formed a strategic alliance designed to advance the two companies’ respective CRISPR-derived genome editing technology platforms.
This multi-faceted agreement includes the cross-licensing of key intellectual property, a research collaboration, and financial investments by DuPont in Caribou, a developer of CRISPR-Cas technologies.
‘DuPont has been responsible for numerous breakthroughs in CRISPR biology and has amassed an impressive array of expertise developing and applying genome editing technologies in promising commercial areas’
Under the terms of the collaboration and license agreement, Caribou and DuPont have engaged in cross-licensing of their CRISPR-Cas-based intellectual property portfolios. Both DuPont and Caribou control patent portfolios covering multiple foundational CRISPR-Cas technologies. The cross-license enables Caribou to develop and utilize CRISPR-Cas technology for product development in multiple fields including human and animal therapeutics, diagnostics, industrial biotechnology, research tools, and certain agriculture segments. The DuPont license to Caribou includes rights to the Cas9-mediated genome editing intellectual property owned by Vilnius University and exclusively licensed to DuPont.
Caribou and DuPont will engage in a multi-year research collaboration, funded by DuPont, under which researchers from the two organizations will collaborate and share insights on how to drive improvements to their respective technology platforms. The companies also announced today that DuPont has made a minority equity investment in Caribou as part of Caribou’s recent Series A financing round. Terms of the research funding and equity investments were not disclosed. Caribou and DuPont are each eligible to receive milestone payments for products commercialized in certain fields.
“DuPont has been responsible for numerous breakthroughs in CRISPR biology and has amassed an impressive array of expertise developing and applying genome editing technologies in promising commercial areas,” said Rachel Haurwitz, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of Caribou. “We are thrilled to partner with DuPont on this initiative and to work collaboratively with the company to speed our product development and actualize the significant promise that CRISPR-Cas genome editing holds for patients and consumers.”
‘Caribou is at the forefront of CRISPR-Cas technology and we are pleased to be collaborating with them to advance this important breakthrough in biology,’ said James C. Borel, executive vice president, DuPont. ‘Genome editing, through the use of CRISPR-Cas technology, is of particular interest to DuPont as a way to accelerate plant breeding and address the need for increased global food production.”
