LEXINGTON, Ky., June 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (“Transposagen”), a privately-held biotechnology company, has accepted the highly prestigious 2015 Tibbetts Award during a White House ceremony in Washington, D.C. The U.S Small Business Administration (SBA) recognized Transposagen with the award for having leveraged Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Institutes of Health in a way that has generated measurable value to the firm and to the nation.
“We at Transposagen are dedicated to providing improvements to the nation and to the world through application of our industry-leading genome engineering technologies. Receiving the Tibbetts Award is a great honor and further fuels our drive to produce high-quality, versatile gene editing tools that play a significant role in improving the quality of human life,” said Eric Ostertag, M.D., Ph.D., founder and CEO of Transposagen.
Transposagen’s unique Footprint-FreeTM Gene Editing (FFGE) system is the only commercially-available system to surgically alter as little as a single nucleotide without creating unwanted mutations, with the added ability to select for very rare events. FFGE has demonstrated to be a revolutionary advance for ex-vivo gene therapy applications and will be instrumental in the creation of allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cells, a promising new therapeutic for a variety of cancers. Transposagen has recently assigned all of its genome engineering technologies to a spin out company named Poseida Therapeutics, Inc., which is focused exclusively on human therapeutic development.
“I would like to thank the SBA, the NIH, the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development and our investors for their trust and support. The investments and multiple SBIR grants from the NIH, along with the matching grants from the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development have been instrumental for our success. Biotechnology is a very complex and expensive field, and without the financial support from these grants, it would have been much more difficult for Transposagen to develop and commercialize our technologies,” added Dr. Ostertag.
About Transposagen: Transposagen is a worldwide leader in genome engineering technologies and services with applications in therapeutics, research & drug discovery, bioproduction, clinical genetic testing and agriculture. Our products and services include Footprint-Free™ Gene Editing, NextGEN™ CRISPR, XTN™ TALENs, custom cell lines, stem cells, and animal models. Our unique genome engineering capabilities allow for the creation of nearly any genetic modification in any genome.
