BaroFold and Lonza Announce a Technology Evaluation Agreement for PreEMT™, a High Pressure Protein Refolding Technology

• The PreEMT™ technology will be used to evaluate the advantage of high pressure protein refolding techniques in comparison to traditional refolding methods.
• Lonza’s evaluation will focus on the effectiveness of PreEMT^TM as a potential solution for difficult to express microbial recombinant proteins and the associated challenges with inclusion body processing.
• The non-exclusive license will allow Lonza to evaluate the PreEMT™ technology at their Visp development facility and includes an option to extend the platform evaluation for use in cGMP manufacturing.

AURORA, Colo. & BASEL, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lonza, a leader in biological development, and BaroFold, Inc., an innovative protein technology developer, announced today a non-exclusive technology and license agreement whereby Lonza will evaluate BaroFold’s PreEMT™ high pressure refolding technology for use in biological development refolding processes. Lonza’s evaluation will focus on refolding difficult to express microbial products expressed as inclusion bodies. The PreEMT™ unit will be installed for evaluation at Lonza’s microbial development and manufacturing plant in Visp, Switzerland. The agreement includes an option for Lonza to extend the platform evaluation to cGMP production analysis.

“This agreement allows us to evaluate BaroFold’s innovative high pressure refold technology as a complement to our existing XS Expression TechnologiesTM Platform and offer customers a comprehensive toolbox for microbial recombinant protein production”

Matthew Seefeldt, CSO and Founder of BaroFold commented, “We are excited to license our high-pressure technology platform to one of the world’s leading Contract Manufacturing Organizations. Lonza is a pioneer in biologic drug manufacturing and to collaborate with them further enhances our ability to provide the global biotechnology arena with a novel refold technology.”

“This agreement allows us to evaluate BaroFold’s innovative high pressure refold technology as a complement to our existing XS Expression Technologies^TM Platform and offer customers a comprehensive toolbox for microbial recombinant protein production,” said Janet White, Global Head of Lonza’s Custom Manufacturing Development Services business unit. “As a leader in the custom development and manufacturing industry, it is critical for Lonza to continue adopting novel manufacturing technologies that have the potential to streamline customer processes and ultimately reduce costs.”

For more information on Lonza’s process development services, please visit us at www.lonza.com.

About PreEMT™

PreEMT™ is a patented technology that employs high pressure for the disaggregation and controlled refolding of recombinant proteins to their native structures at yields and efficiencies not achievable using existing technologies. PreEMT is transformative and practical for manufacturing processes and can substantially reduce the cost of manufacturing due to its increased yield and throughput at high protein concentrations. PreEMT is readily scalable and has been utilized for the cGMP production of phase 1 through phase 3 clinical material.

About Lonza

Lonza is one of the world's leading suppliers to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and life science industries. Products and services span its customers’ needs from research to final product manufacture. It 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 also the world leader in microbial control providing innovative, chemistry-based and related solutions to destroy or to selectively inhibit the growth of harmful microorganisms. Its activities encompass the areas of water treatment, personal care, health and hygiene, industrial preservation, materials protection, and wood treatment. In addition, Lonza is a leader in cell-based research, endotoxin detection and cell therapy manufacturing. Furthermore, the company is a leading provider of value chemical and biotech ingredients to the nutrition and agro markets.

Lonza is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and secondary listed on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited (“SGX-ST”). Lonza is not subject to the SGX-ST’s continuing listing requirements. Lonza is subject to the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange, which do not have specific requirements equivalent to the listing rules of the SGX-ST in respect of interested person transactions, acquisition and realizations, and delisting. In 2011, the company had sales of CHF 2.69 billion. Further information can be found at www.lonza.com.

About BaroFold

BaroFold is applying its Pressure Enabled Protein Manufacturing (PreEMT™) Technology to transform inclusion body refolding and improve the efficacy and safety of a wide variety of protein therapeutics for its industry partners. PreEMT technology has been shown to remove protein aggregates, improving product safety for both new-drug entities and biosimilar products. BaroFold’s contract research services help companies create novel protein therapeutics, accelerate therapeutic protein development, manufacture follow-on biologics, and enable life-cycle management of protein therapeutics. www.barofold.com