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Technology Stocks : Critical Therapeutics (CRTX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tuck who wrote (4)	1/12/2005 2:53:28 PM
From: tuck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31

>>FULLERTON, Calif. and LEXINGTON, Mass., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE: BEC - News) and Critical Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRTX - News) announced today the signing of an exclusive license agreement under which Critical Therapeutics has granted Beckman Coulter certain rights in its patents, patent applications and other intellectual property relating to Critical Therapeutics' proprietary High Mobility Group Box Protein 1 (HMGB1) technology. Beckman Coulter intends to use the HMGB1 technology to develop an immunoassay for detection and management of inflammatory diseases. In return, Critical Therapeutics will receive a license fee, as well as the potential for future development milestones and royalties contingent on sales of any diagnostic assay emanating from the agreement. HMGB1 belongs to a class of proteins called pro-inflammatory cytokines and is secreted by the immune system as part of the body's response to trauma and infection. Critical Therapeutics believes HMGB1 may be an effective therapeutic target for acute diseases resulting in multi-organ failure, including sepsis and septic shock, which according to the Society of Critical Care Medicine, kill more Americans than breast cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer combined. Sepsis and septic shock conditions affect more than 10 percent of the 14 million patients treated annually in intensive care units in U.S. hospitals. HMGB1 levels are also linked to other chronic inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. "The addition of HMGB1 puts us in a leading position with proprietary markers for the diagnosis and management of sepsis," said Mike Whelan, vice president of Beckman Coulter's immunoassays and nucleic acid testing business center. "The HMGB1 technology, along with our previously announced licensing agreement with Research and Diagnostic Antibodies LLC for inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), are key elements in our strategy to aggressively develop new and innovative markers for use on our family of Access® immunoassay systems, including the high-throughput UniCel® DxI 800, as well as the SYNCHRON LX®i 725 chemistry-immunoassay system." "This license agreement is a key step forward for our HMGB1 program," said Paul Rubin, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Critical Therapeutics. "We believe it validates our intellectual property and the research conducted by company co-founder Kevin Tracey and his colleagues in identifying the expression of HMGB1. Furthermore, we believe the ability to detect and measure levels of this important pro-inflammatory cytokine in the blood could be a crucial step toward diagnosing disease severity and provide a rationale for selecting patients most likely to benefit from antibody therapy." Critical Therapeutics is developing antibodies to HMGB1 in collaboration with MedImmune, Inc. To date, the collaboration has generated several antibodies and is in the process of selecting a candidate for clinical development. Critical Therapeutics believes that, unlike other inflammatory mediators, such as interleukin-1 and TNF-alpha, HMGB1 is released much later in the inflammatory cascade and persists at elevated levels for a longer period of time. About Beckman Coulter Beckman Coulter, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of biomedical testing instrument systems, tests and supplies that simplify and automate laboratory processes. Spanning the biomedical testing continuum -- from systems biology and clinical research to laboratory diagnostics and point-of-care testing -- Beckman Coulter's 200,000 installed systems provide essential biomedical information to enhance health care around the world. The company, based in Fullerton, Calif., reported 2003 annual sales of $2.2 billion with 64 percent of this amount generated by recurring revenue from supplies, test kits and services. For more information, visit www.beckmancoulter.com. << snip Cheers, Tuck