BRAIN Expands Its BioArchive By the Acquisition of Genetic Resources for White Biotech...

BRAIN Expands Its BioArchive By the Acquisition of Genetic Resources for White Biotech Screening From MerLion Pharmaceuticals GmbH

ZWINGENBERG, Germany & BERLIN--(Business Wire)--
The White Biotech company BRAIN AG has acquired specific gene
based industrial biotech assets of MerLion Pharmaceuticals GmbH. The
assets include selected microbial strains, a substantial gene
collection (Tool-Box) encoding modifying enzymes and a huge collection
of cosmid libraries comprising more than 800.000 cosmids, harboring
some 16 million genes encoding for novel enzymes and biocatalysts,
which in the last years have been built up and genetically
characterized by the Berlin-based Combinature Biopharm AG. In August
2006, Combinature was acquired by one of the world's leading natural
product research companies MerLion Pharmaceuticals of Singapore. The
Berlin organisation, now MerLion Pharmaceuticals GmbH, focuses
exclusively on the clinical development of antibiotics with core
natural products research activities and microbial assets relocated to
MerLion's facility in Singapore.

Under the terms of the agreement, BRAIN will acquire selected
Actinomycete strains from Merlion. These microorganisms are well known
as producers of natural bioactive compounds as well as rare enzymes
and biocatalysts. This already impressive potential is exceeded by the
genetic potential of these organisms, which is a major insight of
several recent genome sequencing projects. Under this transaction
BRAIN will receive a substantial number of precharacterised and
profiled E. coli cosmid genome libraries from diverse Actinomycete
strains, a Tool-Box comprising several hundreds of cloned genes
encoding modifying enzymes as well as a huge Actinomycete DNA
collection which can be used for sequence-based screening approaches.

BRAIN will use these assets for the targeted genetic screening of
genes encoding industrial enzymes and metabolic pathways. The pathway
genes will be used for the genetic engineering of microbial producer
strains with the goal of high yield expression of compounds for
interesting white biotech markets.

"We see this development as an exciting opportunity to bring our
gene library assets into a research and business environment which
will deliver substantial growth", explains Prof. Dr. Harald
Labischinski, Managing Director of MerLion Pharmaceuticals GmbH. "It
will also allow us to focus our efforts on the advancement of our
promising antibiotic pipeline, which contains several novel candidates
of which finafloxacin is now in clinical development."

"Through the last ten years, BRAIN built up a highly diverse
strain collection as well as broad application knowledge in
Metagenome(R) handling for the identification and development of
innovative BioActives, enzymes and biocatalysts," states Dr. Jurgen
Eck, Chief Technology Officer at BRAIN AG. "We are convinced that the
Combinature microbial resources as well as the vast genetic resources
will complement and strengthen our technology platform. The access to
these resources will be of help to further increase our valid hit
rates and to speed-up development cycles for industrial enzymes and
biocatalysts. Moreover novel metabolic pathways will be expressed in
genetically optimized microorganisms, so-called designer bugs."

BRAIN AG
Biotechnology Research
and Information Network AG
Dr. Martin Langer
Tel.: +49-6251-9331-16
Fax.: +49-6251-9331-11
E-Mail: ml@brain-biotech.de
www.brain-biotech.de

Copyright Business Wire 2008