Nomad Bioscience in licensing deal with Bayer/Icon

Munich-headquartered Nomad Bioscience GmbH hast entered into a broad licensing agreement with fellow Germany-based Bayer Innovation GmbH and its subsidiary Icon Genetics. This provides Nomad access to Icon's proprietary technology platforms, including its transient expression technology magnICON, for manufacturing biomaterials and selected biosimilar pharmaceutical proteins in green plants. The deal provides Nomad with a strategically needed freedom to operate in its core business areas. The financial terms of the accord have not been disclosed.

"Icon Genetics' proprietary gene transfer systems provide a broad solution to the upstream part of manufacturing, and combined with Nomad downstream technologies, they should result in a superior fully-integrated process for most of our intended product candidates," said Yuri Gleba, the founder of Nomad Bioscience. Prof Gleba is also co-inventor of Icon's technologies as well as co-founder and managing director of the latter firm.

"Icon has developed new-generation production platforms that are by far more effective than those commercialized today. Since our own strategic focus is on proprietary biopharmaceuticals, we were looking for a partner who could best apply our proprietary expression methods to other new classes of products," commented Detlef Wollweber, managing director of Bayer Innovation.