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Cellectis Meets the 20 Meganucleases Annual Capacity Milestone

Business Wire - December 12, 2008


PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Biocitech Life Sciences Park, France - Cellectis S.A. (Alternext: ALCLS), the genome engineering company for therapeutic, life science research and other biotechnology industries, announced today the achievement of a key milestone set at the time of its 2007 IPO. The company also provides an update on its objectives and timeline.

By reaching the 20 meganucleases production capacity milestone, Cellectis has delivered on schedule its main objective announced at the time of the IPO on February the 6th, 2007.

"We have now met our objective of a production capacity of 20 meganucleases per year - the fruit of 18 months of significant financial, logistics and personnel commitments. We have recruited, skilled employees (leading to a total headcount of 64, compared to 35 2 years ago), improved our development processes and equipped over 3500 square meters expansion of cutting-edge lab facilities at Biocitech with high technology robotics. From now on, we will be accelerating the development of a large number of products to strengthen our subsidiaries’ portfolios and fulfill our partners growing needs for genome engineering", emphasized André Choulika, Cellectis' founder and CEO. "With Cellectis Genome Surgery, our therapeutics-focused subsidiary, and Cellectis BioResearch devoted to the development and commercialization of research reagent kits, we are developing a wide range of high value added products that provide us with new partnership opportunities", he added. "We have met the milestones that were set at IPO and are in line with their implementations. We are deploying our business strategy as planned at that time. At present, one of our major challenges lies in materializing our ambitions in the field of genetic and viral diseases; with the ACTIVE research program, we are focusing on a novel approach, which seeks to destroy the HIV provirus with meganucleases and brings new hope to treat these chronic infections."

Over the past few months, Cellectis has made significant progress, with announcements involving Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc. (a $17.5 million agreement on the development of novel therapeutic products), the AFM, French Muscular Dystrophy Association, (a €7 million genome surgery program on the treatment of genetic diseases) and ACTIVE (a €10 million project focused on developing antiviral applications of meganucleases, to treat persistent infections due to HIV and herpes-related eye conditions).

Cellectis has also the benefit of the commercial debut of one of its subsidiaries, Cellectis BioResearch, following the market launch of its first research kit on December 1st, 2008 (www.cellectis-bioresearch.com). Lastly, over the first half of 2008, Cellectis SA made its first net profit and its therapeutics-focused subsidiary, Cellectis Genome Surgery, has started the development of its first products in the fields of orphan diseases and antivirals.

A summary of Cellectis' achievements since its IPO is available on Cellectis’ web site (Financial Information’ section).

About Cellectis S.A.

Cellectis SA (www.cellectis.com) is a world leader in genome engineering and genome surgery. The company focuses on developing and producing custom meganucleases for use in vivo genome surgery addressing the therapeutic, agrifood, biomanufacturing and research sectors. Worldwide, Cellectis has entered into more than 50 agreements with major players in the pharma, biotech and agribiotech industries and has over 20 collaborations with academic research groups. Since its incorporation, Cellectis has raised over €50 million in both equity operations and public financing and is listed on the NYSE-Euronext Alternext market (ticker code: ALCLS). For more information on Cellectis, visit our website: www.cellectis.com

Disclaimer - This press release contains forward-looking statements that relate to the Company’s objectives. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations and assumptions of the Company’s management only and involve risk and uncertainties. Potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, whether the Company will be successful in implementing its strategies, whether there will be continued growth in the relevant market and demand for the Company’s products, new products or technological developments introduced by competitors, and risks associated with managing growth. Unfavorable developments in connection with these and other risks and uncertainties described, in particular, in the Company’s prospectus prepared in connection with its IPO and on which the French Autorité des marchés financiers (“AMF”) granted its visa n° 07-023 on January 22, 2007, could cause the Company to fail to achieve the objectives expressed by the forward-looking statements above.

Contacts

Cellectis S.A.
Marc Le Bozec, CFO
+33 (0)1 41 83 99 00
investors@cellectis.com
or
Alize RP
Caroline Carmagnol
+33 (0)6 64 18 99 59
caroline@alizerp.com


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