Transposagen Expands Licence For piggyBac Technology

Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals (Transposagen) has entered into an agreement to expand its license for piggyBac technology to cover nearly all commercial applications.

Reportedly, as part of the licensing deal, Transposagen will be responsible for distribution of piggyBac to researchers working in academia and other not-for-profit institutes and will also control commercial sublicenses.

PiggyBac technology, owned jointly by the University of Notre Dame, the University of Florida and the US Department of Agriculture, is expected to enable facile genetic manipulation of most species. It is the core technology used by Transposagen to create TKO Knockout Rat Models, laboratory rats with a single gene disruption that mimic human disease.

The company has claimed that PiggyBac is a versatile technology that is used for genetic engineering in almost any animal, allowing for both mutagenesis and transgenesis. PiggyBac is now enabling genetic manipulation for a wide range of important species including research animals and agriculturally important animals for which genetic manipulation was previously impossible or cost-prohibitive.

Eric Ostertag, CEO of Transposagen, said: Transposagen was already in the process of using piggyBac to generate tens of thousands of knockout rat lines in a very short period of time. We will now be able to use piggyBac to modify the genomes of other important organisms. PiggyBac is also finding uses in human therapeutics as it can be used to re-program cells to become induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In the long-term piggyBac may even be used for human gene therapy. We will now be able to provide piggyBac to pharmaceutical companies as a novel tool for drug and biomarker discovery.”