Goethe University Frankfurt has spun out Vivlion to commercialise a library of the human genome that could drive the development of more Crispr therapies.
Germany-based biotechnology developer Vivlion has been spun out of Goethe University Frankfurt with the help of its technology transfer subsidiary Innovectis.
Vivlion has developed technology, dubbed 3Cs, that forms the basis of a large library cataloguing the location of individual genes within the human genome.
The approach has potentially far reaching consequences, as Crispr/Cas treatments have so far been held back by the difficulty in building large libraries of genes responsible for a certain action, such as cancer cell survival.
Vivlion’s library consists of 16.5 million unique genetic zip codes, including non-coding regions outside of genes. Non-coding regions hold 98% of the human genome and are thought to be key to numerous regulatory mechanisms.
The technology, for the first time, enables researchers to investigate the entire genome at once. The first 3Cs reagents are expected to be available within the coming months.
The spinout is based on research by Manual Kaulich, who leads an independent research group at the Institute of Biochemistry II, and Andreas Ernst, who at the time was also leading a group in the same institute.
Anja Bremm, also a group leader at the Institute of Biochemistry II, has also collaborated with Kaulich.
Together with institute director Prof Ivan Dikic, Kaulich has also established the Frankfurt Crispr/Cas Screening Centre to make the technology more broadly accessible for studying unknown cellular functions.
Martin Raditsch, chief executive of Innovectis, said: “I am very happy about successfully starting Vivlion from out of Goethe University, because we have here a very promising technology coming together with an excellent working group and a perfectly assembled founding team.”
