Cellectis bioresearch announces winner of The Genome Customization Award

Cellectis bioresearch, a specialist in genome customization and a subsidiary of Cellectis (Alternext: ALCLS), has today announced the recipient of its post-doctoral fellowship award program. The Genome Customization Award (TGCA) is going to Dr Nelson Lau's research group, from the Department of Biology at the Brandeis University (Waltham, Massachusetts). The award was granted after thorough review of several very high profile applications for its outstanding research program on improving transgenesis of Xenopus tropicalis for RNA interference methodologies.

As the winning academic team, Dr Lau's research group will receive euro 15,000 (US$ 18,000) to partially fund for one year one post-doctoral fellow recruited to work on the project, with a possible renewal for a second year.

The award review committee selected Dr Nelson Lau's project based, in part, on its high probability of being successful. The project, which is focused on improving technologies in the model species Xenopus tropicalis, aims at

- Elucidating the rules of molecular specificity in shRNA design

- Applying custom meganucleases for improved transgenesis of the shRNA vector

- Expanding largely the technology

As a member of the same research institution, Prof. James Haber did not take part in the vote.

"We are delighted to be part of the endeavor to bring custom meganucleases to a new model organism where the technology has not been tested yet but has strong promise", stated Dr Nelson Lau.

"The investigator is a pre-eminent siRNA researcher who plans to use Cellectis' custom meganucleases in a very smart way," declared Prof. Rodney J. Rothstein of Columbia University, Chairman of the Committee.

The award will be officially presented to Dr Nelson Lau in March 2011 at the Grand Opening of Cellectis bioresearch Inc. facilities in Cambridge (Massachusetts) by Marc Le Bozec, CEO of Cellectis bioresearch.

The TGCA was established by Cellectis bioresearch in 2010 with the goal of spreading the use of meganucleases for genome customization throughout the Life Sciences community.