Harvard University and Oxford Nanopore Technologies Announce Licence Agreement to...

Harvard University and Oxford Nanopore Technologies Announce Licence Agreement to Advance Nanopore DNA Sequencing and other Applications

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & OXFORD, U.K.--(Business Wire)--
Harvard University's Office of Technology Development ("Harvard")
and Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd ("Oxford Nanopore") today
announced an agreement to progress nanopore science by integrating
Harvard discoveries with technology in development at Oxford Nanopore.

Under the terms of this agreement with Harvard, Oxford Nanopore
has exclusive rights to develop and commercialize a number of nanopore
technological breakthroughs developed in the laboratories of three
investigators at Harvard and their collaborators at the University of
California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST), an agency of the US Department of Commerce. The
investigators include: Professors Daniel Branton, George Church and
Jene Golovchenko at Harvard; David Deamer and Mark Akeson at UCSC and
John Kasianowicz at NIST.

These academics have pioneered the research of DNA translocation
through nanopores and the potential for DNA sequencing using this
method. This is complementary to the work of Professor Hagan Bayley,
the founder of Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Professor Bayley
pioneered the field of nanopores as sensors of single molecules, with
a specific focus on the identification of DNA bases.

Oxford Nanopore will also support fundamental nanopore research at
Harvard, facilitating further advancement of the field and generating
opportunities for further evolutions of nanopore sequencing
technology.

"The inventions licensed to Oxford Nanopore resulted from strong
collaboration across multiple disciplines at Harvard, and also with
academic colleagues from outside of the University," said Isaac T.
Kohlberg, Senior Associate Provost and Chief Technology Development
Officer at Harvard University. "This work and the agreement announced
today are further validation of Harvard's strong commitment to
collaboration and innovation, and to ensuring that the work of our
scientists is extended to benefit society more broadly."

Dr Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, added:
"We are proud to collaborate with this world-class research team.
Harvard's long record of excellence in nanopore research means that
this agreement encompasses many aspects of nanopore technology.
Through this partnership and agreements with other prestigious
institutions, Oxford Nanopore takes the leading position in
transforming nanopores from science into technologies that will
benefit researchers and people everywhere."

Oxford Nanopore is developing nanopores for use in DNA sequencing
and the analysis of other molecules. A nanopore is a small hole; this
inner diameter is small enough to be used in the direct identification
of many single molecules, without using chemical labels. This
technology has the potential to deliver a dramatic reduction in the
cost and speed of DNA sequencing, benefiting basic medical research
and further the field of personalized medicine.

A dramatic improvement in sequencing technology would have a
profound effect on life science and medical research, furthering
genome research and the development of new medical diagnostics,
treatments and strategies. There are many additional applications of
sequencing, within the fields of defense, energy and agriculture.

The single molecule analysis platform being developed at Oxford
Nanopore is label-free, and is therefore positioned to deliver a
step-change in the power and cost of DNA sequencing. While current
technologies rely on expensive fluorescent labels, optical equipment
for signal detection and informatics to translate image data into
sequence data, nanopores bypass the optical detection by providing a
direct electrical recording of DNA base identification. The method is
highly scalable through silicon chip arrays.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

About Harvard University's Office of Technology Development

The Harvard Office of Technology Development (OTD) is responsible
for all activities pertaining to the evaluation, patenting and
licensing of new inventions and discoveries made at Harvard University
and Harvard Medical School. OTD also serves to further the development
of Harvard technologies through the establishment of sponsored
research collaborations with industry. OTD's mission is to promote the
public good by fostering innovation and translating new inventions
made at Harvard into useful products available and beneficial to
society.

The Harvard Nanopore Group

The Harvard Nanopore Group is led by Professor Daniel Branton and
Professor Jene Golovchenko. The group has been investigating
electronic methods of very rapidly detecting, characterizing and
sequencing single molecules of DNA. A detector consisting of a single
nanopore in a thin, insulating, solid-state membrane could mimic the
function of a-hemolysin pores in lipid bilayers, while serving as a
platform for integrated electronic detection devices. The group's
research has lead to the development of a new ion beam based method
for creating nanoscale structures in semiconductors called "ion beam
sculpting".

The Group is also developing other applications that may utilize
the sensitivity and speed of nanopore probing, and is investigating
the physics of DNA polymer movement through the confined space of a
nanopore, coordinating the application of material science tools to
fabricate solid-state nanopores, and developing the associated
biochemistry, molecular biology, electronics, and signal processing to
effect molecular recognition. http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/branton/

Professor Daniel Branton, Higgins Professor of Biology Emeritus,
Harvard University

Professor Branton's research areas include Nanopore technology and
single molecule probing, molecular organization of cell membranes and
cell biology. He has held positions at Harvard University in
Cambridge, MA and the University of California, Berkeley.
http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/Faculty/Branton.html

Professor Jene Golovchenko Rumsford Professor of Physics and
Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics - Harvard University.

Professor Jene Golovchenko has had a broad research career,
encompassing research posts at Harvard University, Aarhus University
in Denmark, in industry, at Bell Labs, in national laboratories at
Brookhaven and Livermore and at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He is
also a member of the Rowland Institute for Science, an
interdisciplinary non-profit basic research institute in Cambridge.

Professor Golovchenko specializes in studying the fundamental
interactions of radiation and matter and the application of this
knowledge to revealing and controlling the properties of materials.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd.

Oxford Nanopore is developing nanopore technology, a revolutionary
method of molecular detection and analysis with potential for DNA
sequencing, diagnostics, drug development and defence applications.
The company was founded on the science of Professor Hagan Bayley of
the University of Oxford, who pioneered the stochastic sensing of
single molecules using engineered protein nanopores, and has published
a method to differentiate between DNA bases using a nanopore.

The Company's BASE(TM) technology is a system for DNA sequencing
that employs nanopores to process, identify and record DNA bases in
sequence. In contrast to current sequencing technologies, nanopores
offer a potential method of directly sequencing DNA at single molecule
resolution. This removes the need for amplification or labelling, and
allows detection from an electrical signal rather than by
fluorescence-based CCD imaging. In order to make a breakthrough in
speed and cost, other competing technologies require step changes in
optics, computation and CCD camera technologies. Nanopores provide an
alternative path to a step-change in the power and cost of DNA
sequencing.

Recent interest in the "race for the $1000 genome" illustrates the
needs for a sequencing technology that is affordable and powerful
enough to provide more researchers with affordable sequencing power.
This is expected to enable an exponential increase in research and
understanding of the genome, and accelerate new developments in
medicine, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, evolutionary biology,
genealogy and many other fields.

The nanopore molecular detection system is powerful and versatile
beyond its DNA sequencing potential. It can be adapted to detect a
wide range of molecules, including other nucleic acids, proteins,
small organic molecules and ionic species.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies holds license agreements for the
development and commercialization of nanopore technology with the
foremost institutions in nanopore science. These include the
University of Oxford, Harvard University, the University of
California, Santa Cruz, Texas A&M, the University of Massachusetts
Medical School and the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST). This places the Company in a unique and leading position for
bringing first and future generations of nanopore technology to the
market.

www.nanoporetech.com

Harvard University
Larry Schlossman
Office of Technology Development
lschlossman@nyc.rr.com
or
Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Dr Gordon Sanghera, CEO
Zoe McDougall, Communications
+44 (0) 870 486 1966
or
Feinstein Kean Healthcare
Krystle Ficco, +1-617-761-6702
krystle.ficco@fkhealth.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008