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Cambrex Licenses Powerful Technologies for Conditionally Immortalized Cells For Use in Drug Discovery

21 Jan 2005 - Cambrex Corporation announced that its subsidiary Cambrex Bio Science Wokingham, Ltd. has signed an agreement for the purchase of conditionally immortalized cell lines, related intellectual property and equipment of Xcellsyz Limited, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Cambrex Bio Science Walkersville, Inc., also a subsidiary of Cambrex, has entered into license agreements for Geron Corporation's proprietary telomerase technology and complementary conditional immortalization technology from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR). Detailed financial terms of the agreements were not disclosed.
 
This powerful combination of technologies for drug discovery will allow Cambrex to conditionally immortalize a broad set of cell types critical to understand and manage metabolic disease: muscle cells for diabetes; adipose cells for obesity; endothelial cells for heart disease; hepatocytes for toxicology studies. Conditionally immortalized cells can be generated in volumes sufficient for high throughput screening (HTS), are homogenous and express normal markers similar to primary cells, thus managing the key limitations of primary cells in drug discovery.