ViaGen, Inc.

In 2005, we formed a joint venture with Exeter Life Sciences, Inc., called Start Licensing, Inc. (Start), a new company that managed and licensed a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies. This unique portfolio included the foundational nuclear transfer cloning technology that was developed at the Roslin Institute through the cloning of Dolly the sheep. The creation of Start combined the leading intellectual property for animal cloning and the full breadth of rights under the Roslin technology under one roof. The joint venture formation was enabled by success in three patent interferences that brought further clarity to the patent landscape, demonstrating the strength of the Roslin patent portfolio held by Start. In each case the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued final judgments in favor of Geron, invalidating animal cloning patents held by others.

In 2008, Geron and Exeter Life Sciences, merged Start with ViaGen, Inc. (ViaGen), an animal cloning and genomics company, and Start became a wholly-owned subsidiary of ViaGen. Under the terms of the merger, Geron and Exeter exchanged their equity interests in Start for equity in ViaGen.

The merger of Start and ViaGen, combines the full breadth of intellectual property rights to nuclear transfer cloning technology with in-house expertise in advanced reproductive technologies, particularly in cloning, to provide a one-stop licensing and operating company. Companies and academic institutions will have access to enabling rights from the Roslin patent portfolio, coupled with the most promising cloning improvements, and expertise in advanced reproductive technologies, enabling research and product development.

The technology that ViaGen offers has the potential to impact many fields of biotechnology product development. In agriculture, cloning can be used to improve health, quality and consistency of animal herds more quickly than is possible through conventional breeding.

For human medicine, cloning may be used to develop animals that secrete therapeutic proteins in their milk, to produce humanized antibodies for use as vaccines or produce animal tissues modified for xenotransplantation.