Pressure BioSciences, Inc. and Battelle Memorial Institute Sign Exclusive Patent License Agreement
SOUTH EASTON, Mass., Dec. 22 — Pressure BioSciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: PBIO) (“PBI” or the “Company”) today announced that they have entered into an exclusive patent license agreement with the Battelle Memorial Institute (“Battelle”). The licensed technology is described in the patent application filed by Battelle on July 31, 2008 (US serial number 12/183,219). This application includes subject matter related to a method and a system for improving the analysis of protein samples, including through an automated, in-line system utilizing pressure and a pre-selected agent to obtain a digested sample in a significantly shorter period of time than current methods, while maintaining the integrity of the sample throughout the preparatory process.
The Company believes that the claims in the pending Battelle patent will build upon and broaden its own existing IP position in using pressure cycling technology (“PCT”) to further enhance the quality and significantly decrease the processing time for protein analysis. This is an area of particular importance for many laboratories worldwide, and is one of PBI’s strategic areas of focus. The novel aspect of the Battelle invention, when combined with the advantages of PCT, offers the possibility of a straightforward approach to the automation of sample preparation techniques. The Company believes that this combination may lead to the potential development of instrumentation to be directly integrated with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry equipment for the complete processing of proteins, from sample preparation to final result – a truly novel approach to protein analysis.
Dr. Nathan Lawrence, V.P. of Marketing for PBI remarked: “We are very pleased to see that customers of PBI’s PCT Sample Preparation System are making discoveries and developing important new applications using our PCT technology and equipment. PCT is gaining acceptance worldwide in many areas of research. We have long anticipated that independent researchers would extend “the Power of PCT” on their own. Although PBI may not always choose to license all discoveries made with PCT by others, the Company will continually assess the value of the discovery to broaden our already extensive patent position. We firmly believe that licensing this particular patent will help us more rapidly reach our goal of making PCT a standard method for accelerating enzymatic reactions in many different fields of the life sciences.”
Dr. Alex Lazarev, Vice President of Research and Development for PBI, said: “This invention combines pressure-accelerated protein digestion with HPLC separation. New instruments based on the combination of this invention and PCT could become a front-end to modern LC-MS instrumentation. These could eliminate major bottlenecks in biological sample preparation for protein analysis, since they could obviate the need for the operator to manually load and unload samples during processing. Such instruments could seamlessly integrate sample preparation with modern HPLC equipment, which could in turn offer the significant advantages of increasing the quality of results and decreasing the time to discovery. For drug discovery and development companies, this could result in a significant reduction in both the cost and time required to get new products to market.”

