Sembiosys and Tasly Sign Multi-Product Commercialization and Platform Collaboration Agreement

SemBioSys Genetics Inc. has announced that it has signed a product and platform development collaboration agreement with Tasly Pharmaceuticals, Ltd of Tianjin China and its wholly owned subsidiary Tasly U.S.

Upon receiving government approval, a new Company based in China called Tasly-SemBioSys Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., will be incorporated in Tianjin, China, the third largest city in China. This Agreement is the most comprehensive partnering commercialization endeavor in SemBioSys' history.

SemBioSys is a biotechnology company that utilizes its renewable, patented plant seed oil body and protein expression technology platforms to develop and make high value proteins and oils and drug candidates for health and wellness products.

Tasly is one of China's largest pharmaceutical companies and is China's second largest producer of traditional Chinese medicines ("TCM"), which are derived from plants. Its lead drug, Tasly Cardiotonic pill, is the number one selling TCM in China and has held that position for the last seven years.

In 2010, Tasly recorded revenues of 4.65 billion RMB with a ten year compounded growth rate of 21%. Tasly also has significant operations in the United States, Africa, South East Asia and the UK with its partner. Beijing International Group, an affiliate of Integrin Partners, acted as strategic advisor to Tasly on the transaction.

The new Company will be structured as a Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Venture (the "Joint Venture"), and will develop and commercialize a variety of products including pharmaceutical, functional foods and nutraceuticals for China and the world. Development work on the first products will begin immediately.

"Tasly brings a rich practice of developing and modernizing China's highest quality and best selling TCMs, which makes them an ideal business partner to globally develop our plant-based protein, high value oils and drug manufacturing technology," said James Szarko, President and CEO of SemBioSys.

Szarko continued, "Our mutual respect and understanding of one another's uniquely suited capabilities, provides us with the potential to have a dramatic impact on the Chinese and global market by delivering a number of high quality products with extremely competitive positioning within these markets."

SemBioSys will be entitled to 30% ownership and profit sharing of the Joint Venture's profits for contributing global rights to develop and manufacture its plant made insulin and insulin analogues (excluding select territories in which SemBioSys is already engaged in active development discussions), as well as licensing rights to research and development activities of additional products for the pharmaceutical and healthy living markets.

Tasly will contribute 100 per cent of the cost of the Joint Venture's global research, development and product commercialization.

Further, Tasly will facilitate preclinical, clinical, regulatory services, manufacturing and commercial expertise and utilize its significant sales force to commercialize the Joint Venture's products in China.

Its sales force covers most Chinese hospitals, retail pharmacies and direct to consumer markets with a total of 60,000 representatives. Outside China, the Tasly sales division has a growing presence in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya.

In addition, Tasly U.S. announced in July that it is purchasing a 450,000 square foot facility in Rockville, MD and investing US$40 million in the new facility for the manufacture of its cardiovascular drug in preparation for Phase III clinical trials in the U.S.

Chairman Yan of Tasly Group Stated, "The collaboration between Tasly and SemBioSys innovates the application of plant transgenic technology to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and cosmetic industries, makes its safer and more cost-effective, and paves a new path forward for agricultural based products. I believe that Tasly-SemBioSys Pharmaceuticals, Ltd., through the powerful combination of the two giants, will have very broad development prospects and expand around the globe with China's huge market potential."

The parties have actively worked for over a year developing their relationship and planning the Joint Venture and will work expeditiously to finalize product development plans and future research products.