Chlorogen's New Method of Altering Crop Plants May Cut Drug Costs, Eliminate Pollen Drift Concerns.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE2K

ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 6, 2003

Chlorogen, Inc., a St. Louis-based biotechnology company, has secured venture funding to develop its patented chloroplast technology to produce plant-made proteins. Chlorogen's initial focus will be on developing pharmaceutical proteins in tobacco.

Chloroplast technology, new to the plant biotech industry, greatly increases the protein output of plants, which could yield a cost-effective supply of proteins for therapeutic uses. And, because chloroplast DNA is not inherited through pollen, Chlorogen's technology can prevent foreign genes from being transferred to other crops through pollen.

Investors include representatives of four leading venture capital companies - Burrill & Company of San Francisco; Redmont Venture Partners of Birmingham, AL; Prolog Ventures of St. Louis and Harris & Harris Group Inc. of New York.

Introducing useful traits into chloroplasts is a significant improvement over the more common method of transforming plants through the cell nucleus. A major advantage is increased protein production. Chlorogen's patented technology enables the plant to produce up to 1,000 times more introduced protein than currently available technologies. The chloroplast is the region of a plant cell where photosynthesis is conducted.

Chlorogen's technology greatly enhances the protein production of tobacco, which is an ideal host plant because it produces millions of seeds for rapid scale-up and can be harvested multiple times per season.

"The use of plants as factories for protein production can address the growing need for additional capacity to produce therapeutic proteins, particularly those used in large quantities," said Roger Wyse, Managing Director of Burrill & Co. "We believe Chlorogen has a distinct competitive advantage because of its extraordinarily high expression levels and elimination of concerns over pollen drift."

"We are focusing our development efforts on pharmaceuticals in tobacco," said Dr. David N. Duncan, Chlorogen's President and CEO. "And we anticipate collaborating with developers of other biotech crops that have issues relative to pollen drift."

Brian Clevinger, Managing Director of Prolog Ventures, predicts that Chlorogen's technology will make the company a major player in the biotechnology industry. "The company's ability to vastly increase per-plant protein production levels in an environmentally sound way gives it a unique position in the marketplace. This bodes well for its product pipeline."

Chlorogen, having successfully expressed proteins in the chloroplasts of tobacco and other crops, will now focus on developing an economical method to extract the proteins for pharmaceutical use. Longer term, Chlorogen intends to license its technology to improve agricultural products, such as insect-protected and herbicide-tolerant crops.

Chlorogen has many potential products in its pipeline. These include proteins to fight cancer, liver diseases and diabetes, for use as a blood-extending agent and to produce a vaccine against the bioterrorism agents anthrax and plague. The company already has expressed these proteins in transformed seeds ready for scale-up.

Dr. Henry Daniell, professor of molecular biology at the University of Central Florida, pioneered chloroplast research at Washington State University in the mid-1980s and further developed it at UCF and Auburn University. Daniell, who is the primary inventor on all of the patents licensed to Chlorogen, is the technical founder and an equity partner in Chlorogen as are UCF and Auburn. Dr. Daniell's laboratory at UCF will continue to develop products, which will become part of Chlorogen's intellectual property portfolio.

The Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise, a biotechnology incubator in St. Louis, will be headquarters for Chlorogen, whose scientists will conduct research in the center's state-of-the-art laboratories. Additionally, Chlorogen will collaborate with scientists at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis.

Burrill & Co. invests across the entire spectrum of life sciences. This includes human healthcare biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology, nutraceuticals, human healthcare diagnostics, biomaterials and bioprocesses. The company has invested in more than 30 companies and manages a family of venture capital funds, with more than $340 million under management.

Redmont Venture Partners invests in technology-based companies throughout the Southeast through various funds, including the Paradigm fund, through which the Chlorogen investment was made. Based in Birmingham, Redmont focuses on early-stage companies and is most often involved in the founding of the companies in which it invests.

Prolog Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in life sciences and related information technologies. Its managers have more than 50 years of experience in all aspects of new-enterprise development. Prolog is an active, hands-on investor, and works closely with its portfolio companies on refining strategy, sharpening execution and building strong management.

Harris & Harris Group is a publicly traded venture capital firm investing in tiny technology, including nanotechnology, microsystems and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Since 2001, Harris & Harris Group's last 11 initial investments have been in tiny technology.

NOTE TO REPORTERS: Find extensive background information on Chlorogen and chloroplast transformation at www.chlorogen.com.