IDT acquires Surveyor Nuclease business from Transgenomic

Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), a supplier of custom nucleic acids, has acquired the Surveyor enzyme business of biotech company Transgenomic. IDT will make an upfront payment of US$3.65 million and additional minimum payments of US$0.60 million or more to Transgenomic during the first year of the agreement.

As part of the agreement, Transgenomic will transfer rights to the Surveyor patents, licence, technology, know-how and trademarks to IDT, as well as all inventory. IDT will exclusively sublicense rights for all clinical and diagnostic applications of the technology back to Transgenomic.

Surveyor Nuclease, a member of the CEL nuclease family of mismatch-specific nucleases isolated from celery, has been shown to recognise and cleave mismatches arising from single nucleotide polymorphisms or small insertions or deletions. Surveyor Mutation Detection Kits meanwhile provide a simple and robust method for detecting mutations and polymorphisms in DNA.

IDT Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Gunstream said the company is “excited about adding the Surveyor product line to our growing molecular biology portfolio”.

“These products will be of great benefit to IDT customers, most of whom are in the field of genetic analysis, and of particular use to those whose work involves mutation detection or validation of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing,” said Gunstream. “IDT can offer these products with the same speed, quality and support for which we have become known. We plan to continue developing and commercialising further applications of Surveyor Nuclease.”

Transgenomic President and CEO Paul Kinnon said, “The sale of our Surveyor Nuclease technology and assets for the research market to IDT allows us to focus more resources on our commercialisation efforts in our core Patient Testing, Biomarker Identification, and Genetic Analysis and Platforms business units.

“The monetisation of this asset will also contribute to our expedited development and commercialisation efforts for ICE COLD-PCRTM, Transgenomic’s groundbreaking technology that enables the detection and monitoring of actionable mutations in cancer patients using non-invasive liquid biopsies,” he continued.

“By licensing back exclusive rights to clinical and diagnostic uses of the technology, we have ensured that we will have continued access to Surveyor technology in high-value clinical and pharmaceutical services applications.”