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1 Oct 2001

Affitech and Isogenica agree exclusive license to novel discovery technology for human antibodies

AFFITECH AND ISOGENICA AGREE EXCLUSIVE LICENCE TO NOVEL DISCOVERY TECHNOLOGY FOR HUMAN ANTIBODIES Strategic Collaboration Will Accelerate Development of Isogenica’s Covalent Display Technology
Cambridge, UK / Oslo, Norway 1st October 2001

Isogenica Ltd, Cambridge, UK and Affitech AS, Oslo, Norway announced today that they have entered into a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement for the development and commercialisation of Isogenica's proprietary Covalent Display Technology (CDT). For Affitech this provides a novel second generation platform for enhanced high throughput production of recombinant antibody products derived from their fully human libraries. This is the first major deal for Isogenica, signed only eight months following the launch of the Company, and is part of its strategy to fully exploit CDT in a variety of high value applications.

Under the new agreement, Affitech will use CDT to take full advantage of its own proprietary antibody library technology to rapidly generate powerful high affinity human antibodies for the development of new therapeutics and diagnostics. The deal provides Affitech with an exclusive licence to commercialise immunoglobulins and antibodies generated using CDT and fits well with Affitechs strategy to become a market leader in the discovery of human antibodies. For Isogenica, benefits accrue not only from licence fees and royalties, but also from access to additional scientific input to accelerate its research and development programme.

We are signing an increasing number of deals with partners to develop products from our fully human libraries. CDT is a valuable complement to our current technology portfolio. Being a fully in vitro technology, CDT is extremely well suited for automation and the high throughput required in application areas such as functional genomics, proteomics and drug discovery. We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Isogenica, in particular as I was involved in the discovery of the technology here in Oslo University, said Dr Ole Marvik, CEO of Affitech.CDT is the first component of a platform of exciting molecular evolution technologies emerging from Isogenica. CDT is a novel, in vitro display library technology that can rapidly generate high affinity, high specificity binding molecules to any given drug target. As a result, CDT can address three major bottlenecks in pharmaceutical research, namely: target validation, lead generation and lead optimisation.

We regard Affitech as a key antibody player and we are pleased to have secured this strategic alliance with them. This is the first of several corporate partnerships that we are seeking to accelerate the development of the technology and to discover new drugs, said Dr Simon Kerry, Commercial Director at Isogenica. br>