Norwich, United Kingdom
1 December 2015

Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL), a technology development and intellectual property (IP) management company, announced today that it has entered into a licensing agreement that grants Thermo Fisher Scientific a world-wide, non-exclusive license to the Baulcombe patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 6,753,139, 7,704,688, 8,097,710, 8,258,285, 8,263,569, 8,299,235, 8,349,607, 8,759,102 and 8,779,236) for use in the field of research reagents and kits. Financial terms were not disclosed.

PBL’s Managing Director Dr Jan Chojecki, stated: “We are very pleased to enter into this agreement with Thermo Fisher, a global leader in research reagents based on RNA interference and detecting gene silencing. Thermo Fisher has an excellent product portfolio in this important and growing area of science. We look forward to working with other partners through our non-exclusive licensing strategy in agricultural, research, diagnostic and therapeutic commercial applications. We are pleased to be able to make non-exclusive licenses available on reasonable commercial terms to assist our partners in all areas of RNAi.”
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About PBL
Plant Bioscience Limited (PBL) is a technology development and intellectual property management company owned in equal parts by The Sainsbury Laboratory, the John Innes Centre and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. PBL promotes the development and commercial uptake of academic research results for public use and benefit and is specialised in life sciences, and in particular plants, agriculture, food and microbial science.
PBL is the owner of the patent rights created at The Sainsbury Laboratory by the pioneering contributions of Professor Sir David Baulcombe and Dr Andrew Hamilton to the field of RNA interference.

About The Sainsbury Laboratory
The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) www.tsl.ac.uk is a world-leading research centre located in Norwich, UK, focusing on making fundamental discoveries about plants and how they interact with microbes. Professor Sir David Baulcombe is now Regius Professor of Botany and Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Cambridge. Dr Andrew Hamilton is now at The University of Glasgow, in the Division of Cancer Sciences and Molecular Pathology.

About RNA Interference (RNAi)
RNAi (RNA interference) is a revolution in biology, representing a breakthrough in understanding how genes are turned on and off in cells, and a completely new approach to drug discovery and development. Its discovery has been heralded as “a major scientific breakthrough that happens once every decade or so,” and represents one of the most promising and rapidly advancing frontiers in biology and drug discovery today which was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. RNAi is a natural process of gene silencing that occurs in organisms ranging from plants to mammals.

Website: http://www.pbltechnology.com

Published: December 11, 2015