Crown Bioscience, Inc and ERS Genomics Ltd. have signed a global license agreement for access to the foundational CRISPR/Cas9 patent portfolio held by ERS, which provides the company full license to operate globally using CRISPR/Cas9 for gene editing. Financial details were not disclosed.
 
Crown Bioscience is a global CRO supporting drug discovery and development for oncology, immuno-oncology, and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, providing preclinical and translational services to pharma and biopharma companies.  
 
ERS holds an exclusive worldwide license from co-founder and 2020 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier for the foundational intellectual property covering CRISPR/Cas9 for use as a research platform. ERS Genomics holds over 100 patents worldwide.
 
With this new agreement, Crown Bioscience will expand its gene editing capabilities and investigate the prospect of gene editing in 3D patient-derived tumor organoid models. The agreement also allows the company to develop additional unique and relevant preclinical tools in 3D for higher throughput screens, with the option to add matched in vivo models downstream for translational studies.
 
“Expanding our current offering provides more innovative drug discovery solutions for our customers,” said Mike Prosser, Chief Business Officer at Crown Bioscience. “We see tremendous potential for using CRISPR gene editing to enhance and manipulate cells and potentially patient derived organoids in both 2D and 3D.”
 
Eric Rhodes, CEO at ERS said, “CRISPR continues to see ever broader use in revolutionizing biotechnology. We are excited to engage with Crown Bioscience and see the technology used in even more cutting-edge applications. Their use of CRISPR to edit cells involved in organoid development is brilliant and we’re always keen to support novel explorations of CRISPR potential.”