Merck, the leading science and technology company, and the Broad Institute ofMITandHarvard(Boston, Massachusetts) has announced an agreement to offer non-exclusive licenses to CRISPR intellectual property (IP) under their respective control for use in commercial research and product development.

 

"Together with the Broad Institute, we are simplifying the path to licensing CRISPR technology, which will make it more widely available to the global research and discovery community," saidUdit Batra, member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science. "Through this agreement, we will make it easier for our customers to be successful in their research that shortens drug development timelines for previously untreatable diseases."

 

Broad Institute and Merck share the goal of enabling all entities to apply the technology with a wider range of CRISPR tools. To streamline access for scientists, Broad Institute will offer licenses to Merck's and Broad Institute's CRISPR IP portfolios to potential licensees for internal research use and for commercial research tools and kits. Under the agreement, companies applying CRISPR in their research and development activities can license both sets of IP through Broad Institute. The framework is designed to allow other key patent holders to participate in the future — either through this framework or via a third-party patent pool or collaboration — to further streamline non-exclusive access to key CRISPR technology.

 

The institutions worked together to develop a framework that (i) continues to provide non-exclusive access to Broad-controlled IP co-owned with its collaborators (includingHarvard University, theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, New York Genome Center,New York University,The Rockefeller University, theUniversity of IowaResearch Foundation, TheUniversity of Tokyo, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and others) and (ii) provides non-exclusive access to IP from Merck, with certain limitations specific to the Merck IP for creation of rodent models.

Under the agreement, companies applying CRISPR in their research and development activities can license both sets of IP through Broad Institute.