Cologne (Germany) / Milan (Italy) – Lonza and Axxam are pleased to announce the signing of a license agreement enabling Lonza to include Axxam’s Photina®, i-Photina® and Clytin® Photoproteins as calcium biosensors in Lonza’s broad range of Clonetics® Primary Cells.

“We are really pleased to have entered this license agreement with Lonza”, says Sabrina Corazza, responsible for Business Development at Axxam. “It allows us to further validate and exploit our proprietary technology platform on photoproteins, and to address relevant market needs.”

“Enabling customers to easily perform assays in primary cells is a critical component of our primary cell strategy”, says Leon de Bruin, Senior Product Manager in Lonza’s Drug Discovery Marketing group. “Our newly introduced Clonetics® Primary Sensors range of products allows customers to access their primary cells of choice and measure endogenous receptor activity using the same technologies and protocols that they are used to using with over-expressing cell lines.”

Clonetics® Primary Sensors build on Lonza’s position as the leading primary cell supplier and industry leading transfection capability to address the widely stated desire by researchers to measure drug targets in a biologically relevant environment. Well characterised primary cells are expanded to generate a sizeable and robust cell bank. The sensor is added to the cell using Lonza’s highly efficient Amaxa® Nucleofector® Technology and substrate is added before the cells are frozen. The customer receives a frozen, ready to use product.

About Lonza

Lonza is one of the world’s leading suppliers to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and life science industries. Its products and services span its customers’ needs from research to final product manufacture. Lonza is the global leader in the production and support of active pharmaceutical ingredients both chemically as well as biotechnologically. Biopharmaceuticals are one of the key growth drivers of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Lonza has strong capabilities in large and small molecules, peptides, amino acids and niche bioproducts which play an important role in the development of novel medicines and healthcare products. Lonza is a leader in cell-based research, endotoxin detection and cell therapy manufacturing. Lonza is also a leading provider of value chemical and biotech ingredients to the nutrition, hygiene, preservation, agro and personal care markets.

Lonza is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. In 2009, Lonza had sales of CHF 2.690 billion. Further information can be found at www.lonza.com.

About Axxam

Axxam is a discovery company focused on research programs for applications in the life science industry. It is a privately owned biotech firm based at the San Raffaele Biomedical Science Park in Milan (Italy), with a team of about 60 highly qualified people. Axxam began operations as an independent and privately-owned company in November 2001, but its roots are built upon years of experience as part of the Bayer HealthCare, Research and Development organization. The company performs a wide range of activities including assay development, high-throughput screening, compound profiling and hits-to-leads testing. In addition, Axxam conducts several discovery programs for selected targets which are carried out in partnership with other companies or non-profit organizations. For more information, please visit www.axxam.com.