Transparent Inc., a leader in 3D cell culture plate design and applications supported by comprehensive patent portfolio in biomaterial sciences, and Molecular Response Laboratories (MRL), a privately held molecular diagnostic services company and a leader in the identification of target populations for high value therapeutics, today announced extension of their original validation studies and execution of key long term collaboration agreement.

Under the terms, parties will jointly introduce a novel 3-dimensional cell culture system based on TRP’s patented 3D cell culture plate design and manufacturing technologies, and MRL’s proprietary bank of ‘living’ tumor cells and quantitative high content platforms. The platform will be marketed under TRP’s “Cell-able OncologyTM” brand with key contract research support for preclinical and clinical trial applications by MRL.

Current strategies for developing new anticancer drugs rely heavily on preclinical testing in cancer cell lines and their derived in-vivo xenograft models. A significant limitation to current preclinical testing is the use of highly passaged cancer cell lines grown on plastic.

Improved preclinical models are required to advance our understanding of the molecular aberrations that underpin cancer and are critical for developing and deploying targeted therapies to improve patients’ lives.

Cell-able OncologyTM allows primary tumor cells to grow in 3-dimensional cultures that more closely resemble in-vivo like conditions. Models grown in 3-dimensional culture conditions coupled with molecular characterization provide a stronger correlation to clinical outcomes than conventional preclinical anticancer drug testing.

“We are very pleased to collaborate with Molecular Response to provide key enabling technologies to pharmaceutical researchers and medical professionals by introducing Cell-able OncologyTM,” said Transparent CEO Rocky Kato. “Transparent and Molecular Response will present collaborative research outcomes at the AACR Annual Meeting to be held in Chicago from March 31 to April 4, 2012. Molecular Response pharmaceutical research services combined with Cell-able OncologyTM will provide researchers the right tools to perform transformative drug discovery with patient-derived primary tumor cells and focused molecular targets that enable drug sensitivity testing that is strongly correlated to clinical outcomes.”

About Transparent Inc.

Transparent Inc. develops and sells a novel cell culture system “Cell-able”. The 3-dimensional cell culture system has been developed with multi patent filed photosensitive polymer technology and cell biological technology, creates in-vivo environment on multi-well plates. The system is applied to patient derived tumor cells, iPS cells, hepatocytes and any kinds of cells, and provides advanced cell culture models to develop new drugs and/or therapeutics. Over 60 pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions are now using this technology.

For additional information please visit www.cell-able.com.

About Molecular Response LLC

Molecular Response is a leader in advancing targeted therapeutics through intelligently designed, clinically validated companion diagnostics. Our goal is to reduce risk and cost of therapeutic drug development for our partners by translating clinically relevant molecular response marker data into high-value knowledge while fully integrated into existing pharmaceutical development processes and programs; Our results reduce risk and cost of drug development and allow for the most informed decisions with best chance of success to advance therapeutic programs.