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April 20, 2009 TRANS GENIC INC. |
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TRANS GENIC Licenses Knockout Mouse to Takeda Pharmaceutical Company |
We hereby announce that TRANS GENIC INC. (headquartered in Kumamoto, Japan, CEO: Ken-ichi Yamamura, hereinafter referred to as “we”) has concluded a licensing agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (hereinafter referred to as “Takeda”) regarding the use of our patented knockout mice. |
| Under the agreement, Takeda is entitled to use one specific strain (hereinafter referred to as "the strain") among many others cyclopaedically produced by us. We will receive a licensing fee from Takeda for the use of the stain. |
| We started knockout mouse business in April 2000 after an "exchangeable gene-trap method", a technology discovered by Dr. Ken-ichi Yamamura (currently serves as our CEO) to efficiently produce knockout mice, was transferred to us. Then we cyclopaedically produced a large variety of knockout mice and ES cells in our laboratory. We have been disclosing their genetic information on "TG Resource Bank®" for the purpose of promoting licensing business of strains. The agreement with Takeda is one of the achievements in the business. |
| Knockout mice produced by the exchangeable gene-trap method are excellent tools for analyzing specific gene functions. One of the characteristics of the mice is that human genes and point mutation can be inserted in a gene region knocked out by the technology. Therefore the knockout mice are very useful for efficacy evaluation of biotechnology-based medicines conducted by many pharmaceutical companies. We will make our further effort to gain recognition of usefulness of our knockout mice in drug discovery as well as basic researches to promote the business more actively. |
| The effects of said agreement on our business performance are immaterial, but we intend to make an announcement in the future when it starts to have a significant impact on our business performance. |
| Reference: |
| *TG Resource Bank® |
| It is a name of our bioresource library on our website. We have disclosed information of approximately 700 knockout mouse strains and approximately 2,000 knockout ES clones produced by the exchangeable gene-trap method since September 2006. |
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