Microbia Announces Second Collaboration Agreement with Ranbaxy Laboratories

Microbia, Inc. have announced that its Precision Engineering™ business unit has entered into a research collaboration with Ranbaxy Laboratories to lower the cost of a biomanufacturing process under development by Ranbaxy.

The goal is to achieve a greater than 100 percent productivity improvement in the precommercial biomanufacturing of an undisclosed pharmaceutical product.

Microbia will undertake strain engineering and laboratory-scale testing. Ranbaxy assumes responsibility for optimizing processes and validating product specification acceptability.

Under the agreement, Ranbaxy will fund Microbia's research and development and will make payments based on the achievement of development milestones. Financial terms were not disclosed.

This is the second agreement between the two companies, following a successful collaboration to apply Precision Engineering™ to generate higher yields in a Ranbaxy biomanufacturing process for a statin.

Ranbaxy has since advanced the improved strain into commercial manufacturing. The two companies have collaborated to improve biomanufacturing processes since February 2003.