CEVEC Pharmaceuticals, the developer of a novel human protein expression system derived from amniocytes has announced  the signing of a co-exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Life Technologies Corporation, a leading provider of innovative life science solutions based in Carlsbad, California. Under the terms of the agreement, Life Technologies and CEVEC will co-operate to offer optimized expression kits based on CEVEC's proprietary CAP-T cells to the global life science research community. Life Technologies will pay CEVEC a signing fee and various milestone payments and royalties on sales of the future products. Further details of the agreement were not disclosed. CEVEC will continue to expand its global license business of the CAP® and CAP-T® technologies for commercial use and industrial development purposes.

CEVEC's transient CAP-T protein production technology is based on CAP cells, a human immortalized cell line for stable protein production derived from amniocytes. CAP cells are optimized to growth in serum-free suspension cultures and show human-like post-translational modifications including authentic human glycosylation patterns.

Life Technologies combines CEVEC's proprietary protein expression system based on CAP cells with its tailored protein expression product portfolio (media, transfection reagents etc.) to enable research scientists worldwide to achieve highest yield and quality protein expression.

"We strongly believe in the tremendous value of the co-operation as the global research community is offered a fully optimized human expression system to transiently express proteins with superior yields and authentic human glycosylation patterns," said Wolfgang Kintzel, CEVEC's Chief Commercial Officer and Managing Director.

"We are extremely proud that Life Technologies has chosen the CAP technology to extend its top notch protein expression product portfolio," added Dr. Rainer Lichtenberger, CEO of CEVEC.

The immortalized CAP cells are derived from primary human amniocytes and meet highest ethical standards. CAP cells are optimized to grow in a variety of flask/wave formats up to large-scale processing in bioreactors and can be very efficiently transfected with commercially available transfection reagents.

CAP® and CAP-T® are trademarks of CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, all rights reserved, CAP-T® not yet registered in all territories.

About CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH - www.cevec-pharmaceuticals.com
CEVEC Pharmaceuticals GmbH, operational since 2004 was founded by a group of internationally renowned scientists and clinicians from the University of Cologne. Based on their experience and their longstanding collaborative work, they had perceived a lack of innovative expression systems for more efficient production of biologics such as recombinant proteins or gene therapy vectors. CEVEC's novel proprietary human CAP® and CAP-T® expression systems are ideal for manufacturing complex and difficult to express biopharmaceutical molecules with authentic human glycosylation patterns. The immortalized cells are derived from primary human amniocytes and meet highest ethical standards. Already adapted to serum-free growth conditions, they can be very efficiently transfected with commercially available transfection reagents and are optimized to grow in a variety of flask/wave formats up to large-scale processing in bioreactors. CEVEC offers flexible licensing arrangements for CAP and CAP-T. Additionally, co-development opportunities are available for selected complex therapeutic proteins made with the CAP Technology to address attractive target markets.