News - details

20 May 2002

Invitrogen signs option agreement to license Isogenica’s covalent display technology

INVITROGEN SIGNS OPTION DEAL WITH ISOGENICA TO EXCLUSIVELY LICENSE CUTTING-EDGE MOLECULAR EVOLUTION TECHNOLOGY
Cambridge, UK, and San Diego, CA, USA, 20 May 2002

Isogenica Ltd, an emerging life science company specialising in the development of molecular evolution technologies, announced today that it has signed an option agreement with major US biotech, Invitrogen Corporation (Nasdaq: IVGN), the world's leading supplier of molecular biology and cell culture products and services. The option, if exercised, provides Invitrogen rights to use Isogenica's proprietary Covalent Display Technology (CDT) to generate and commercialise individual polypeptides and clones for the global life science research market and to develop protein chip products based on polypeptides discovered using CDT. In exchange, Isogenica may receive a fee upon completion of a development milestone and royalties on marketed products. Isogenica's CDT technology has the potential to provide Invitrogen with diverse molecular libraries from which to generate high affinity molecules that can then be developed for use in life science research applications. In particular, these reagents may be valuable to researchers seeking to fully exploit information arising from genomics and proteomics research.

"We view this in vitro technology as having excellent potential, and if fully developed by Isogenica to meet our expectations it could be a powerful addition to our research capability," said August J Sick, Vice President, Business Development, Invitrogen Corporation. "We regard Invitrogen as the leading global provider of products and services to the life science industry and are pleased that such a major player recognises the value that our technology can bring to their business," commented Dr Simon Kerry, Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, Isogenica. "We believe our molecular evolution technology can address the three major bottlenecks in pharmaceutical research today - target validation, lead generation and lead optimisation. Our agreement with Invitrogen is the second of several corporate partnerships we are seeking which will allow full exploitation of the CDT technology."