According to the company, the EZcohort™ program was developed in response to “a need for speed and predictability in drug discovery.”
Dr. Michael Seiler, portfolio director, Commercial Genetically Engineered Models, Taconic Biosciences, told us the company has “innovated in the transactional space.”
“Instead of requiring materials transfer agreements, as many repository vendors do, we sell these under a label license and we make it very clear what the terms and conditions are to use, breed, and crossbreed these valuable genetically engineered models,” he said.
According to Seiler, the label license affords customers the “right and freedom” to develop and discover therapies “unencumbered of any royalty obligations to the inventors of the model.” It also provides assurance that drugs and therapies developed in the rodent systems are the property of the developer.
The model system is a group of cryopreserved proprietary models controlled by Taconic.
“No longer do we have to keep genetically engineered models in live production cages we can cryopreserve them and keep a larger number of variants in a more cost effective way,” explained Seiler.
Seiler also explained that while some repository owners discriminate on the customer base with which they can distribute, the EZcohort model doesn’t. “Our goal with the program is to make it really easy for people to buy new rodent systems,” he said.