Agreements

* On November 19, 2013, Curie-Cancer, the body responsible for developing Institut Curie\'s industry partnership activity, has announced two three-year partnership agreements with Meiogenix, a French SME. Meiogenix develops SpiX® technology under license from Institut Curie and Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA). This technology is based on the use of Spo11, an evolutionary conserved endonuclease that naturally catalyzes the formation of meiotic double-strand breaks. It modulates the process of homologous recombination in the genome by increasing its frequency in cold regions. By stimulating the process in ‘regions of rare exchange’, SpiX can unlock unexplored genetic diversity. This technology will be deployed in yeast and mice to exploit the unexplored natural biodiversity of organisms.
The original focus in the development of the technology was to treat cancer. However, Meiogenix also identified major applications for plants or for  yeast which have been widely used in food production processes for bread, cheese, wine and beer. The current research programs at Meiogenix aim to demonstrate that SpiX is able to increase the frequency of meiotic recombination in cold regions of plant genomes (rice, corn, wheat, etc), resulting in new commercial varieties of plants with interesting traits (resistance to dryness for example). This may have  the potential to meet the food needs of the growing worldwide population.