Symphogen Issued Patent Covering Symplex™ Technology for Antibody Discovery

Business Wire,  March 5, 2008  

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COPENHAGEN -- Symphogen A/S announced today that the European Patent Office granted the Company European Patent number 1 670 912 B1, which describes a high-throughput method for isolating fully human, antigen-specific antibodies directly from human donors, and other related methods. The patent covers Symplex[TM], Symphogen's proprietary process for discovering antibodies with diversity and specificity customized to a particular therapeutic application. The granted European patent is effective in 33 countries across Europe. Symphogen has additional pending applications from this patent in numerous countries across the world.

"Symplex[TM] is a novel PCR-based technology for efficient isolation of truly human antibodies," said John Haurum, M.D., D.Phil., Chief Scientific Officer of Symphogen. "By applying the Symplex[TM] technology we have been able to publish the broadest human antibody repertoires against single targets, and because the exact antibody specificity from the human donor is maintained, the resulting antibodies possess naturally high affinity and potency. I expect this will translate into a low risk of crossreactivity against normal human tissues."

"The grant of this European patent for Symplex[TM] protects a key commercial asset of the Company," said Kirsten Drejer, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Symphogen. "Symplex[TM] not only fuels our own internal pipeline of antibody therapeutics, but is also available for licensing to companies seeking a powerful antibody discovery tool."

About Symplex[TM] The Symplex[TM] antibody discovery process begins by isolating B lymphocytes, which are responsible for making antibodies, from naturally immune human donors displaying a high number of antibodies against a particular target antigen, such as an infectious agent. The antibodies are then obtained from this starting material using plasma cell isolation and Symplex[TM] PCR cloning, which maintains the cognate (original) pairing of the antibody heavy and light chains without any cell culturing steps. Therefore, the high antibody affinities generated in the natural human immune response translate directly and unaltered into lead antibodies discovered by Symplex[TM]. The extracted antibody repertoires are then produced and lead candidates identified in an automated high-throughput screening process.

The Symplex[TM] technology maintains an exact identity with the original donor antibody repertoire and mimics the natural human immune response. All processes leading to the isolation of specific antibodies have been automated, thus, the Symplex[TM] technology is a fast method to generate naturally high-affinity and high-specificity drug leads.

About Symphogen Symphogen A/S is the leader in developing recombinant polyclonal antibodies (rpAb), a new class of biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of serious human diseases. By employing its pioneering antibody discovery and manufacturing technologies, Symphogen generates recombinant antibody compositions that capture the diversity and effectiveness of the natural immune system. Symphogen is building a proprietary product pipeline within several disease areas, including infectious diseases and cancer. Symphogen has established collaborations with international pharmaceutical companies.

Symphogen is a private biopharmaceutical company with over 75 employees, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Refer to www.symphogen.com for further information on Symphogen.

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