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Medicago and PBL sign license agreements for PBL's bipartite expression and related technologies

10 Aug 2006 - Medicago and PBL (Plant Bioscience Limited) announced the signing of license agreements to give Medicago access to a range of technologies for the high level expression of heterologous proteins in plants. The agreements give Medicago access to PBL's bipartite expression system and a wide range of suppressors of gene silencing.
 
The bipartite viral expression system was developed by Dr George Lomonossoff and co-workers at the John Innes Centre, UK using specific elements of comoviruses. It achieves high levels of heterologous protein expression by relying on truncated replicons for amplification. It also has the benefit of not requiring the production of infective viral particles and thus provides complete bio-containment. A patent application with inventors from the John Innes Centre and Medicago has been filed by PBL. The suppressors of gene silencing are from two other research groups.
 
Under the agreements Medicago receives a non-exclusive license with exclusive options to produce pharmaceutical and industrial proteins in Medicago, Trifolium and Nicotiana species. PBL will receive license fees and milestone fees as well as product royalties. Details of the financial terms were not disclosed.