Febit Intellectual Property Sold
Febit was a provider of microfluidic instrumentation for DNA enrichment and analysis, which last year transitioned to a miRNA biomarker services business, Comprehensive Biomarker Center, following a 2010 restructuring (see IBO 6/30/10). According to SGI, the acquired assets include seven patent families for “methods to produce polymers, specifically double-stranded, synthetic nucleic acids from a variety of oligonucleotides on a solid support; and methods for retrieving sequence-verified synthetic nucleic acids following assembly on solid supports.”
La Jolla, CA 9/17/12—Synthetic Genomics (SGI), which is focused on developing genomic solutions for global challenges, has purchased three families of patents and patent applications from Febit Holding, including the know-how, equipment and technical support for implementation. The intellectual property is related to synthetic genomic technologies with the potential to reduce the cost of DNA synthesis, including methods for highly parallelized, low-cost synthesis of oligonucleotides and the retrieval of sequence-validated DNA. “The intellectual property from Febit will strengthen and accelerate SGI’s ongoing development and commercialization of a variety of products including algae-based food and nutritional products, biofuels, biochemicals, synthetic vaccines and clean water,” stated SGI Founder and CEO J. Craig Venter, PhD. “The ability to construct accurate and inexpensive DNA, together with our current proprietary DNA assembly and genome transplantation methodologies, enable enhanced capacity to synthesize DNA and reprogram cells at a larger scale than what is currently achievable.”
