Chemizon Participates in Crown Bioscience, Inc. Series B Round and Forges a Strategic Alliance

LONGMONT, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chemizon, a division of Optomagic (KOSDAQ:010170), through its recently formed private equity fund, announced today that it participated in Crown Bioscience, Inc.’s Series B round of financing. Further, Chemizon and Crown Bioscience, a provider of biology and pharmacology services, have established a strategic partnership that will provide their collaborators with a cost-effective, integrated drug discovery platform focused on generating best-in-class clinical candidates.

“Chemizon is now ideally positioned to enter into value-added collaborations aimed at discovering and developing innovative small molecule therapeutics,” said Dr. Anthony Piscopio, President, CEO and Chairman of Optomagic Co. Ltd. “Crown Bioscience has assembled an excellent management team that shares our vision, has clearly distinguished themselves as experts in cancer pharmacology and will now have the financial recourses to expand their operations and branch out into other therapeutic areas.”

”We are pleased that Chemizon has decided to take an equity position in Crown Bioscience and are excited to be able to provide our partners with a world-class, integrated discovery platform through this strategic partnership. With the cost of developing breakthrough therapeutics continuing to climb, we are poised to take advantage of the shift of high-value discovery research to Asia, by providing a state-of-the-art scientific platform to our collaborators,” added Dr. Alex Wu, CEO of Crown Bioscience.

The Chemizon-CrownBio partnership will offer a wide range of capabilities and products including: protein cloning and expression, protein purification, antibody production, X-ray crystallography, computational chemistry, ADME-DMPK, PK-PD studies, TGI studies with validated tumor models including orthotopic models, parallel synthesis, medicinal chemistry, Progenitors™, LEADz™, radiolabeling, and process research. In addition, through CrownBio’s proprietary HuPrime^TM platform, the partnership can also provide high-value services in biomarker discovery and development to support future clinical development.

About Chemizon: Chemizon is a rapidly growing drug discovery services organization with operations in South Korea, China and the United States. Our goal is to become the partner of choice for Pharmaceutical and Biotech companies seeking to enhance their product pipelines. Our experienced, repatriated management team and skilled scientists use the Chemizon Discovery Platform to help our partners enhance their product pipelines in an efficient, cost-effective manner. For more information on Chemizon, please visit our web site at www.chemizon.com.

About Crown Bioscience, Inc: Crown Bioscience, Inc. is a premium biology CRO, providing discovery and early development solutions for global biotech and pharmaceutical companies. It is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, with wholly owned research centers in Beijing, China and Indianapolis. Crown Bioscience is the leader in providing high-quality and cost-effective services in preclinical oncology. Our services include target protein expression, purification and crystallization, in vitro/in vivo pharmacology, non-GLP toxicology, PK/PD, and translational research with patient-derived cell lines and animal models. For more information, please visit our web site at www.crownbio.com.

Disclaimers: This press release may contain certain "forward-looking statements" regarding the collaboration between Chemizon and Crown Bioscience, Inc. These statements are based on the Parties' current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. The forward-looking statements may include statements regarding product development, collaboration potential or financial performance. None of the forward-looking statements are guaranteed, and actual results may differ materially from those projected. The Parties may choose to update this notice in the future, based on new information, future events, or otherwise, but undertakes no obligation to do so. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the Parties' business, including, but not limited to, the health of the global life sciences industry, the growth of the outsourcing business model and the ability of the Parties to derive value from successful collaborations.