Press Release

Cellectis SA and Fermentas enter into a License Agreement

Paris, France and Vilnius, Lithuania - November the 18^th, 2003 - Cellectis SA, a biotechnology company specialized in genome engineering, and Fermentas, a leading producer and supplier of restriction endonucleases, announced today that the companies have entered into a License agreement in which Cellectis granted a non exclusive worldwide license for manufacturing and comercializing the endonuclease I-SceI.

Financial terms and conditions of the agreement were not disclosed.

I-SceI was one of the first identified homing endonucleases, and is today the most widely used for research and genome engineering. I-SceI is a model homing endonuclease of the LAGIDADG family.

Natural Meganucleases are very rare DNA cutters and very powerful tools that can be used for: chromosomal mapping, in vitro genetic engineering, in vivo genetic engineering, animal models, protein production, bioprocesssing, pharmacogenomics, and genome engineering.

I-SceI has become the gold standard for meganuclease site-directed induced-recombination, and has been successfully used in bacteria, yeast, mammalian cells, fish, worm, flies and plants.

As of today, I-SceI is commercially available to researchers worldwide through orders that can be made directly at Fermentas (contact: info@fermentas.it).

Fermentas' commercial preparation of I-SceI respects strict internal QC system requirements for stability and reproducibility and is especially suitable for micro-injection experiments (See Product Specificity at: http://www.fermentas.com/catalog/re/iscei).

Cellectis SA (www.cellectis.com) was founded in 1999, as a spin-off from the Institut Pasteur. It is the first company to apply the Meganuclease Recombination System approach to in vivo genome engineering. The company is developing Meganucleases that can target a unique DNA break in vivo, as a fundamentally enabling technology for commercial applications in human therapeutics, pharmaceutical discovery, agriculture and industrial biotechnology. Cellectis' team today consists of 35 people including 14 PhDs and the total invested capital since the company's inception is approximately EUR 20 million.

Fermentas International Inc. is a world leader in the discovery, manufacturing and marketing of more than 300 high quality molecular biologicals and provides premium contract services to the international life science research community. As a dynamically evolving biotechnology company, Fermentas strives to make vital contributions to the rapidly growing fields of genomics, proteomics and microfluidics through key partnerships and collaborations. Fermentas International Inc. has four divisions, which operate in Canada, USA, Germany and Lithuania. The company's R&D and manufacturing operations are primarily performed in Lithuania while other divisions are involved in sales and other business operations. The manufacturing is performed according requirements of ISO9001 and ISO14001. Fermentas' 28-year solid scientific and R&D background, product development experience, flexibility and strong team spirit make it an ideal research, technology development and manufacturing partner to bring new technologies and products to the market. More information on Fermentas can be accessed at www.fermentas.com.

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