Emendo Biotherapeutics has achieved the first milestone under its alliance with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., resulting in the transfer of the second half of the investment from Takeda to Emendo.

Emendo has executed two agreements with Takeda, including an investment in convertible notes from Takeda Ventures, Inc., the corporate venture arm of Takeda and a licensing option agreement that grants Takeda the option to use OMNI, Emendo’s nuclease program to edit two genes as part of its R&D efforts. Additionally, Emendo will apply its nuclease engineering platform to optimize the OMNI nuclease on Takeda’s chosen genes.

The funds received will be used to further advance Emendo’s nuclease discovery platform and portfolio development programs, continuing the optimization of its newly discovered panel of CRISPR-OMNI nucleases.
Emendo’s OMNI enables extremely specific gene editing which minimizes off target cuts and allows for highly focused therapeutic intervention in complex genetic diseases. The milestone demonstrates Emendo’s ability to discover novel CRISPR nucleases, OMNI nucleases that show high activity in mammalian cells.

Emendo’s chief executive officer, David Baram, said, “We’re very pleased with the progress we have seen with this project and with the exciting discoveries of novel CRISPR nucleases with high activity. It has been very effective to collaborate with an innovative company such as Takeda as it allows us to factor in the perspective of a large pharmaceutical company while discovering and designing gene-editing machineries.”