OREANDA-NEWS. GE Healthcare Life Sciences, (NYSE: GE) and Cellectis Group (Alternext: ALCLS), the global genome engineering specialist, announced today that GE Healthcare has licenced Cellectis to develop, manufacture and sell models derived from stem cells for use in drug discovery and toxicity screening. The agreement follows the announcement that GE Healthcare has expanded its licence with Geron to obtain exclusive global rights to Geron’s intellectual property and know-how for the development and sale of cellular assays derived from stem cells. Financial terms were not disclosed.

As the worldwide pharmaceutical industry seeks to reduce drug development costs and bring more effective, safer drugs to market, the availability of more biologically relevant and predictive cell models becomes increasingly important. GE Healthcare is pioneering the development of human cell-based assays and models for use in drug discovery and predictive toxicity screening. In 2010 the company launched CytivaTM cardiomyocytes (human heart cells), stem cell-based assays that are already helping pharmaceutical companies identify drug candidates that show toxic effects much earlier in the discovery process.