Chemicon and Cellumen Announce an R&D Agreement

Serologicals Corporation has announced that Chemicon International, Inc., its wholly-owned subsidiary, has entered into a research and development agreement with Cellumen http:// www.cellumen.com, Inc., to commercialize a cytotoxicity profiling panel and services designed with Chemicon and Upstate's cellular assay reagents and Cellumen's system cell biology approach.

Chemicon will focus on the development and production of the resulting assays and panels, while Cellumen will focus on their use in profiling services and knowledge generation. The companies will jointly market these solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.

"We are pleased to combine our expertise in reagent technologies with the systems cell biology approach being pioneered by Cellumen," stated Jeffrey D. Linton, President of Chemicon and Upstate, which comprise Serologicals' Research Segment.

"The use of cellular systems to profile toxic responses at the earliest stages in drug development will enhance the ability of our Pharmaceutical customers to select appropriate compounds for further development and represents a major opportunity to address the attrition rate in the process."

"We are committed to bringing the highest quality reagents and services to the life sciences market to address the major challenges in basic research, and drug development."

"Systems cell biology is the study of the cell as the basic unit of life: an integrated and interacting network of genes, proteins and biochemical reactions which give rise to functions and life," stated D. Lansing Taylor, Ph. D., CEO of Cellumen, Inc.

"Cytotoxicity must be viewed as a systems response and not just the response of a few cellular constituents."

"There is great potential to have a systems cell biology profile that will be predictive of the human toxic response. This is a major challenge in the drug development process."