Prometheus and Bayer HealthCare Enter into Services Agreement to Conduct Mutational Analysis

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 8, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Prometheus Laboratories Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical and diagnostic company, announced today the execution of an oncology-focused mutational analysis services agreement with Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Germany, a worldwide leading pharmaceutical company. The addition of this mutational analysis services agreement broadens Bayer's oncology-focused molecular and pathway activation profiling collaboration with Prometheus to include comprehensive mutational analyses.  The expanded information derived from this agreement has the potential to improve patient stratification in clinical studies and accelerate the development of novel oncology diagnostic and therapeutic products.

Under the terms of this agreement, Bayer will provide clinical samples, sourced from clinical studies, and Prometheus will perform mutational analyses that characterize the presence or absence of existing and novel cancer-relevant mutations in these samples. Prometheus will be compensated based on the number and complexity of mutational analyses it completes for Bayer.

"This agreement represents further validation of the importance of our oncology focused CEER and mutational analysis platforms," said Joseph M. Limber, President and Chief Executive Officer of Prometheus. "The combination of our mutational analysis and CEER platforms that this agreement represents is an important step to providing a more comprehensive analysis to Bayer, that may result in improved selection of patients who will benefit the most from specific drug candidates Bayer is developing. We believe this collaboration has the potential to ultimately result in improved outcomes for patients."

Prometheus and Bayer entered into a research collaboration and license agreement in March of this year. This collaboration partners Prometheus' proprietary oncology diagnostic CEER platform with Bayer's broad oncology pipeline with the objective of stratifying patients to appropriate drug candidates and accelerating the development and market introduction of novel oncology therapeutic and diagnostic products. Using functional pathway analysis, based on Prometheus' CEER platform, promises to enable a comprehensive understanding of tumors leading to improved patient stratification in clinical studies and improved utility and efficacy of targeted cancer therapeutics.

Prometheus' proprietary CEER platform measures the expression and activation of specific cancer pathways with high levels of sensitivity and specificity using tissue or blood samples. The CEER platform has shown great promise to improve the selection and evaluation of the efficacy of drugs in development and in the clinical setting to enable real-time molecular profiling, the monitoring of drug effectiveness in the use of a growing number of targeted therapies.

About Prometheus

Prometheus Laboratories Inc. is committed to improving lives through the development and commercialization of novel pharmaceutical and diagnostic products that enable physicians to provide greater individualized patient care.  Prometheus is a leader in applying the principles of personalized medicine to the diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases and is applying these principles to oncology.  Its strategy includes the marketing and delivery of pharmaceutical products complemented by proprietary diagnostic testing services.  By integrating therapeutics and diagnostics, Prometheus believes it can provide physicians with more targeted solutions to optimize care for their patients.  Prometheus' corporate offices are located in San Diego, California.

SOURCE Prometheus Laboratories Inc.