Noerr advises Cellex on $250 million investment by Blackstone Life Sciences

24.06.2021

Acting as lead counsel, Noerr has advised the Dresden-based Cellex Group on launching a new company in the USA with Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. The goal is to develop safer and more effective gene therapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancers and autoimmune diseases. The sole founding investor, Blackstone Life Sciences, has provided $250 million. The new jointly owned company, to be located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will receive from Cellex its subsidiary GEMoaB and from Intellia its CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology.

“We are very pleased to have been able to support our long-standing client Cellex in this significant growth milestone and its collaboration with Blackstone and Intellia Therapeutics,” says Noerr partner Jens Gehlich. The head of the firm’s Dresden office shared the joint lead on the project with two other Dresden-based partners, Sebastian Voigt and Prof. Sebastian Wündisch, one of the world’s leading experts in technology transfer and licensing. Noerr’s role in the project also involved coordinating the work of the team from the US law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

Advisors to Cellex Cell Professionals GmbH: Noerr

Jens Gehlich (Corporate/M&A), Sebastian Voigt (Private Equity), Prof. Sebastian Wündisch (IP, all Dresden, joint lead), Dr Fabian Badtke (Antitrust, Frankfurt), Dr Jennifer Bryant (Arbitration, Düsseldorf), Yvonne Dietzel (Employment, Dresden), Dr Anke Meier (Arbitration, Frankfurt), Dr Bärbel Sachs (Foreign Trade, Berlin), Angelika Schmid (Employment, Munich), Evelyn Schulz (Healthcare, Dresden)

Associates: Anja Böhme (Tax), Doreen Annette Geidel (IP, both Dresden), Dr Isabel Jakobs (Compliance/Product Safety, Munich), Dr Vitaliy Kaminskiy (Tax, Berlin), Hans Kenschke (Corporate/M&A), Peter Scheuch (Tax), Susann Jahn (Healthcare), Dominik Pokora, Felix Ferdinand Winkler (both Corporate/M&A, all Dresden)

Local Counsel USA: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

Julio E. Vega (lead), Benjamin J. Stein (both Corporate/M&A, PE), James P. Carrigan, Byunghwi Rho (both IP)