Cellectis Acquires Electroporation Firm Cyto Pulse for $2.2M in Cash

Cellectis will marry Pulse Agile platform with meganuclease-based genome engineering technology.

Cellectis has purchased all the assets of electroporation technologies firm Cyto Pulse Sciences for $2.2 million in cash. The firm says its acquisition will provide both financial and technological benefits. These include over $600,000 in annual licensing income from agreements relating to Cyto Pulse’s Hybrimune™ electrofusion technology for hybridoma production, which is already available from Cellectis bioresearch. In addition, Cellectis gets a range of electroporation instrumentation for the in vitro and in vivo delivery of nucleic acids and proteins, and the Pulse Agile® platform for use in combination with its own meganuclease platform.

“Cyto Pulse’s assets are a great strategic fit for Cellectis,” comments André Choulika, CEO.  As we announced last year, part of our strategy is to acquire businesses that complement our existing meganuclease platform and that can be leveraged across all aspects of our business, from research to therapeutics.”

Cyto Pulse claims its Pulse Agile electroporation technology differs from standard electroporation methods in that it allows control of pulse parameters from pulse to pulse within a single delivery sequence. This allows the values for pulse voltage, pulse duration, interval between pulses, and number of identical pulses in a subset to be programmed to change during a series of pulses. The upshot is that maximum cell permeability and maximum DNA delivery can be achieved by delivering a series of brief high electric field pulses at the beginning of electroporation to induce permeability in a large area of the cells, followed by delivery of a series of lower electric field pulses.

French firm Cellectis is focused on the development of meganuclease-based tools for genome-engineering applications in research, biomanufacturing, and therapeutics. The firm’s family of kits is commercialized through its Cellectis bioresearch business. Announcement of the Cyto Pulse acquisition follows on just two days after Cellectis reported signing a deal with Cedarlane, through which the latter will distribute its Cellular Genome Position System (cGPS®) product line for targeted gene integration in Canada.