Redwood City / Frankfurt – September 6, 2007 - Lumiphore, Inc., an investment holding of Nanostart AG, has achieved a commercial breakthrough in the fast-growing market for high throughput screening. The Silicon Valley company signed an exclusive commercialization agreement with Cisbio.
Cisbio, with over 600 employees, is a leading global provider of technologies for drug discovery. "This agreement represents a major step in our quest for highly performing TR-FRET assays," said Francois Degorce, head of HTRF® marketing and business development at Cisbio. "We strongly believe that Lumi4™ compounds will enable us to widen our HTRF® product portfolio and strengthen our leading position in this field."
"For Lumiphore, in which we have a shareholding of more than 20 percent, the signing of this agreement marks a decisive breakthrough," added Andreas Kröll, senior portfolio manager at Nanostart AG. "It will enable Lumiphore to have access to the rapidly growing market for high throughput screening through an exclusive partnership with the market leader in this area. Furthermore, this will now provide the basis to go after large additional high-growth segments of the life sciences market, with very high prospects for success."
Under the agreement, Cisbio receives the exclusive rights to apply Lumi4™ technology to so-called TR-FRET-based (time-resolved fluorescence resonance energy transfer) assays which serve to detect certain substances and are used for high throughput screening, a widely used procedure within pharmaceutical research. The new Lumi4™ technology brings excellent photophysical properties as well as increased sensitivity and stability to this procedure.
High throughput screening (HTS) is an automated procedure which allows a very large number of substances to be tested for their biological effects in a short period of time. According to estimates by industry experts, the U.S.-dominated global market for HTS had total sales of USD 7.6 billion in 2005. Of this, the market for the necessary reagents was almost USD 1 billion.
About Nanostart:
Nanostart AG is Europe’s leading nanotechnology investment company, with headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. The company is organized into two divisions: the Portfolio Division, which manages its own investment holdings; and the Financial Services Division, which advises financial service providers on investing in the nanotechnology sector.
About Cisbio:
Cisbio international is a global developer of technologies which, through the development of assays and drug screening procedures, are used to optimize drug discovery. Cisbio is the pioneer in the field of homogenous fluorescence methodologies with its proprietary technology HTRF®, a highly sensitive and robust technology for the detection of molecular interactions of proteins in vitro, widely used by the pharmaceutical industry for high throughput screening for the development of new drugs. With its HTRF® technology, Cisbio offers its customers through the world a comprehensive technology platform for GPCR and kinase screening. The company also produces a number of biological reagents and procedures for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and contract research companies. Cisbio international has facilities in France, the United States (Bedford, Massachusetts), and Japan.
About Lumiphore:
Lumiphore, Inc., with headquarters in Redwood City, California, is a nanotechnology company which markets its proprietary lanthanide technology for use in high-value applications by entering into market-specific alliances with corporate partners. Lumiphore has an exclusive license to the basic technology developed at the University of California, Berkeley, laboratory of Professor Kenneth N. Raymond, a world expert on lanthanide chemistry. Lanthanide nanoparticles provide increased sensitivity for fluorescent reagents in biology in that they enable detection with a vastly improved signal-to-noise ratio.
DISCLAIMER:
This notice constitutes neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of offers to purchase or subscribe to securities. There will be no public offering of securities of Nanostart AG in conjunction with the existing listing of its shares in the “Entry Standard” segment of the regulated unofficial market (Freiverkehr) on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This notice does not constitute a securities prospectus. Neither this notice nor the information contained within is intended for direct or indirect distribution within the United States of America, Canada, Australia or Japan.
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