NABsys and Brown University Establish Strategic Partnership; Brown takes equity stake in nanobiotechnology company

Business Wire, August 9, 2005

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Providence-based NABsys, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Brown University to commercialize inventions made in the field of solid-state nanopores for bioanalytical applications. The transaction involves the grant to NABsys of exclusive worldwide rights to certain intellectual property developed at Brown as well as the issuance to Brown of a significant equity interest in the Company.

"I really could not be happier, nor could I choose a better partner with whom to move forward in this most important area," said Barrett Bready, M.D., NABsys CEO and alumnus of Brown University and Brown Medical School. "I am glad that Brown recognizes the potential that nanopore-based technologies hold, and I am excited to be working together with them to make low cost, high speed sequencing a reality."

The technology on which NABsys was founded has been developed by Xinsheng Sean Ling, Associate Professor of Physics at Brown and co-founder of NABsys. Dr. Ling was recently awarded a $1.55 million grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue research in the field of solid-state nanopores. The research is being pursued in Dr. Ling's labs at Brown in collaboration with investigators at Harvard.

"I am particularly gratified to have entered into the partnership with Brown, " said Dr. Sean Ling. "While the University setting affords us an ideal opportunity to pursue the NSF-funded research, I think it is equally important to have a commercial partner taking the lead in attracting the additional resources and talent necessary to make this technology a commercial reality."

"The partnership between NABsys and Brown reflects our commitment to encouraging, increasing and improving academia-industry collaborations and to embracing entrepreneurial commercialization as a valid and rewarding form of knowledge dissemination," noted Charles Kingdon, Associate Vice President, Brown Technology Partnerships. "We will continue to work closely with NABsys and other emerging start-up high technology sister companies from Brown to maximize their chances of success in the global marketplace. We wish Barrett and his team every success in the future."

NABsys Director, Leon Cooper, noted that, "This is the way great science should be commercialized. A brilliant scientist in the person of Sean Ling has assembled a truly world-class team of partners and advisors and NABsys is moving forward in true partnership with the university." Professor Cooper is the Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science at Brown University, the Director of the Institute for Brain and Neural Systems at Brown, and the 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

About NABsys

NABsys is a single-molecule biophysics company dedicated to further developing and commercializing nanopores for bioanalytical applications. NABsys controls the intellectual property for a method of manufacturing addressable nanopore arrays. These arrays have the potential to analyze DNA and other biomolecules using much lower sample sizes, in real time, and at lower cost than traditional bioanalytical methods. This technology has broad applications in clinical diagnostics, drug development, and basic research. For more information on NABsys, please call (401) 454-4706.