Emendo Biotherapeutics has announced that the company achieved the first milestone as laid out in the agreements with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda), resulting in the transfer of the second half of the investment from Takeda to Emendo and completion of funding of the convertible notes agreement signed on Feb 1, 2019.
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 proprietary nuclease program- to edit two genes as part of its research and development efforts. Furthermore, Emendo will apply its proprietary nuclease engineering platform to optimize the OMNI nuclease on Takeda's chosen genes.
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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 gene editing program, OMNI, enables extremely specific gene editing which minimizes off target cuts and allows for highly focused therapeutic intervention in complex genetic diseases. The achievement of this milestone demonstrates Emendo’s success at being able to discover novel CRISPR nucleases, OMNI nucleases that show high activity in mammalian cells.
Emendo's CEO, David Baram, says, "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.”