Zygogen Licenses Morpholino Antisense Technology From The University Of Minnesota For Use In Zebrafish

Zygogen, LLC, a biotechnology company
that utilizes zebrafish for drug discovery, today announced that it has an
exclusive license from the University of Minnesota to use morpholino
antisense technology in zebrafish. Morpholino antisense, recognized as the
best-validated system for effective inhibition of gene function in
zebrafish, provides a rapid method for target validation in a living
vertebrate model system.


The terms of the agreement include license and royalty payments to the
University of Minnesota, which owns the patent for the zebrafish morpholino
antisense technology. In addition, Zygogen has the right to sub-license the
technology.


"We are pleased to license morpholino technology to validate potential
targets," said Nina Sawczuk, co-founder and CEO of Zygogen. "A major
application of our zebrafish platform is performing rapid gene knock-downs
in our proprietary Z-Tag(SM) and Z-Lipotrack(SM) zebrafish models. There is
a high degree of genetic conservation between mammals and zebrafish. Since
zebrafish gene knock-downs can be performed in weeks rather than months,
zebrafish are being adopted for target validation studies."


Zygogen uses its proprietary zebrafish technology platform to provide
in vivo preclinical drug discovery services to pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies. Services include target validation, automated
compound screening and toxicity testing.


As vertebrates, zebrafish embryos have become a valuable tool for
obtaining live animal data early in the drug discovery process. Large
numbers of embryos can be arrayed in multi-well plates with very small
quantities of drug, providing a less expensive and faster screening
alternative to mammalian models.


By interrupting gene activity in zebrafish, morpholino antisense
technology helps identify medically relevant genes whose protein products
may be targets of future pharmaceutical drugs. Using specific antisense
oligonucleotides to block either translation or splicing of targeted mRNA
molecules in zebrafish, morpholino technology enables the functional
analysis of targeted genes.


"Zygogen provides access to zebrafish technology to a variety of
pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. As academic zebrafish tools and
models are developed, Zygogen actively in-licenses intellectual property to
maintain our leadership position in zebrafish technology, and to
consolidate the critical elements for a broad commercial zebrafish
platform," said Sawczuk.


The U.S. patents and other foreign patent applications for morpholino
technology cover compositions and methods of making and using zebrafish
with gene expression that have been modified using morpholino antisense
molecules. The patent was initially filed in 2000 by Stephen C. Ekker,
Ph.D., director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Transposon
Research, and associate head of the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology,
and Development at the University of Minnesota, along with co-inventors
Aidas Nasevicius, Ph.D., Hyon Kim, Ph.D., and Saulius Sumanas, Ph.D. The
University of Minnesota retains the academic research rights to morpholino
technology.


About Zygogen, LLC


Founded in 1999, Atlanta-based Zygogen LLC is a pioneer in the
commercialization of zebrafish technology. Zygogen partners with
pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to provide automated zebrafish
screening services using its Z-Tag and Z-Lipotrack technologies. Zygogen
established the first-ever pharmaceutical partnership using zebrafish for
drug discovery (Aventis Pharma, 2002) and continues to be a leader in
zebrafish preclinical drug discovery services, including rapid target
validation, compound screening and toxicity testing.


Z-Tag enables Zygogen to automate zebrafish compound screening and
obtain quantitative data by designing transgenic zebrafish with
fluorescently labeled organs and pathways relevant to human disease and
toxicity. For more information, visit: zygogen.


Zygogen, LLC

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