Baxter Renews Co-Promotion Agreement with Althea for Manufacturing Services - Press Releases

Baxter Renews Co-Promotion Agreement with Althea for Manufacturing Services
March 24, 2005
Althea Technologies, Inc.
Baxter Renews Co-Promotion Agreement with Althea for Manufacturing Services
SAN DIEGO - March 24, 2005 - Althea Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of innovative technologies for pharmaceutical services and manufacturing, announced today that it has extended its agreement with Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Baxter Pharmaceutical Solutions, LLC to co-promote Althea's plasmid DNA manufacturing services and each company's contract fill and finish services.
The agreement provides companies that are developing plasmid DNA vaccines and other biologics with a solution for their manufacturing and clinical packaging needs from the preclinical stage through commercialization. Under the agreement, Althea provides additional capacity for small batch production and filling capabilities to customers in preclinical through Phase III clinical trials. Baxter will continue to provide development services and clinical scale production support while also providing large batch production, packaging and filling services as customers commercialize their products and launch into the market.
"We are extremely pleased with the confidence that Baxter has shown over the past year in working with Althea as its partner," stated Dr. Magda Marquet, co-President and co-CEO of Althea. "This agreement has been very successful thus far and we look forward to continuing to provide our customers with a comprehensive set of production and filling capabilities for preclinical through Phase III clinical trials and having Baxter provide a seamless transition to commercialize their products," said Rick Hancock, Senior Vice President of Operations of Althea.
"Baxter continues to expand its service and technology offering to meet the parenteral outsourcing needs of our pharma and biopharma customers," said Joel Tune, general manager of Baxter's BioPharma Solutions business. "This ongoing agreement with Althea provides our customers with complementary contract services to Baxter's offering, which includes: development and manufacturing of API, form/fill/finish into syringes, vials and cartridges, lyophilization and cytotoxics manufacturing in addition to our proprietary technologies, which includes NANOEDGE dispersion and PROMAXX microsphere formulation technologies and our enhanced packaging," said Tune.
Director of Business Development at Penn, Dr. Chris Higgins said "With the requirements of the EU Clinical Trials Directive coming into force on 1st May 2004, Althea is one of a number of U.S companies that have sought our advice and services in this area. We currently have 5 QPs on site that are available at short notice to conduct audits thus ensuring that study timelines remain firmly on schedule."
Baxter, NANOEDGE and PROMAXX are trademarks of Baxter International Inc., its subsidiaries or affiliates.
About Althea Technologies, Inc.
Althea Technologies, a leading San Diego-based pharmaceutical services firm, provides critical manufacturing and development services that support researchers worldwide in their advancement of novel therapies and efforts to apply new genomic information. Althea provides services including cGMP contract manufacturing of DNA-based therapeutics and vaccines, aseptic filling, and gene quantification using real-time PCR and gene expression analysis under GLP conditions. Additionally, Althea has introduced new services and technologies for the identification and understanding of gene signatures with innovative tools such as the company's proprietary eXpress ProfilingTM technology. For more information, visit wwww.altheatech.com.
Contact:
Alan Moore
Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer
Althea Technologies, Inc.
(858) 882-0205
amoore@altheatech.com