AGI and Epitomics Inc (EPI), a biotechnology company dedicated to developing rabbit monoclonal antibodies, have entered into a broad based collaboration aimed at developing superior immunohistochemistry (IHC) reagents for diagnostic classification of cancer and clinical biomarker development. Rabbit monoclonal antibodies are rapidly being recognized as excellent IHC reagents able to distinguish protein expression in solid tissue with consistent clarity. This collaboration aims to generate a comprehensive set of rabbit monoclonal antibodies useful for disease classification including targets selected by AGI from AGI's proprietary 'Panels of Diversity' as well as targets from critical oncology signaling pathways.

AGI will assess existing EPI catalog antibodies for their clinical utility and will directly screen monoclonal antibody candidates during development to identify those rare clones that make superior IHC reagents. These selected and optimized IHC reagents will create a new research product line, termed AGI-Select, which will be available via Epitomics' antibody catalog and targeted to pathologists and those engaged in biomarker discovery.

Using these superior IHC reagents, AGI will develop individual and combinations of markers into clinical diagnostic tools using its proprietary databases of staining results, tissue arrays with clinical follow up data, and broad network of clinical collaborators.   Diagnostic potential will be assessed on both newly created collaboration antibodies as well as existing EPI catalog antibodies.

Commercial diagnostic licenses to antibodies developed from the collaboration or inquiries about biomarker discovery opportunities that take advantage of the collaboration's antibodies and AGI's database of staining in thousands of normal and cancer specimens are available directly from AGI and Epitomics.

For more information about Epitomics and its rabbit monoclonal antibody business, please visit EPI’s website at www.epitomics.com