Cellectis sues Shionogi for infringement of its Patents concerning Homologous Recombination Technology

Biocitech, France, May the 9th, 2008 – Cellectis SA, has announced today that it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Shionogi in the Japanese District Court of Osaka. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that, by generating and using engineered
mice in the drug development process, Shionogi infringes three Cellectis patents relating to the process of specific replacement of a gene in a cell such as a mouse ES cell. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for infringement.

The Japanese patents (# JP3059481, JP3298842 and JP3298864) were issued to Institut Pasteur. As the exclusive licensee of these patents, Cellectis, has access to the process of targeted integration of DNA sequences.

A major benefit of this patented technology is to provide the Pharmaceutical industry with means to reduce attrition rate in drug development. The resulting knock-in/knock out mice allow acceleration of drug target validation, early elimination of drugs with safety issues, screening of drugs for higher efficacy, development of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and significant improvement of the pharmaceutical pipeline development.