SAN FRANCISCO– Serotiny, a leader in high-throughput therapeutic Multi-Domain Protein (tMDP) engineering, and Tessera Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new approach in genetic medicines known as Gene Writing technology, today announced a collaboration to engineer programmable Gene Writer proteins. This collaboration will build on Tessera’s innovations in genome engineering technologies and apply Serotiny’s tMDP mining and design expertise to further optimize Tessera’s programmable Gene Writer proteins, capable of making diverse and directed alterations to the genome.
“We’re extremely excited to be working with the Tessera team,” said Colin Farlow, J.D., Serotiny’s CEO. “It provides Serotiny a unique opportunity to extend the validation of our platform and to continue to advance our efforts in discovering and developing proteins with novel function for the purpose of enhancing the therapeutic utility of next-generation genetic medicines.”
Tessera’s Gene Writer candidates can allow the substitution, insertion, or deletion of DNA sequences, as well as the writing of entire genes into the genome, offering the potential for a new category of genetic medicines. By partnering with Serotiny, Tessera will have the ability to identify, screen, and optimize a variety of proteins that can serve as the foundation of future Gene Writer therapies across a variety of disease states.
“Tessera’s mission is to cure disease by writing in the code of life and we’re committed to continuously innovating to improve and expand our Gene Writing platform,” said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Tessera. “Our R&D engine seeks to learn from billions of years of mobile genetic element evolution to generate novel Gene Writing systems with the ability to solve important challenges in genetic medicine. Serotiny’s multi-domain engineering expertise has the potential to further optimize our Gene Writer protein libraries and we’re delighted to partner with the Serotiny team.”
Under terms of the agreement Serotiny will receive an upfront payment and is eligible for certain future consideration, contingent upon the collaboration achieving pre-specified performance thresholds.
