Molecular Response (MRL) Announces Sale of Business Unit To Crown Bioscience, Inc.

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Molecular Response (MRL), a privately held molecular diagnostic services company and a leader in the identification of target populations for high value therapeutics, announced today sale of its PDX business unit to Crown Bioscience, Inc.

Under the terms of the agreement, Crown has acquired MRL's PDX bank of several hundred established models currently available for in vivo pharmacology services and several other models under development, with additional acquisition of 8,000 viable human tumors for model development over the next two years from MRL's viable tumor bank of over 140,000 unique cryopreserved tumor samples, and the ability to further develop models from the wider collection.  As part of the agreement, Crown will assume MRL's San Diego-based PDX service operations, and designate the site as a global center of excellence for Translational Oncology.

MRL will continue operations as a more focused group, maintaining the 'living' tumor bank of over 140,000 tumors that have now been proven and accepted by pharmaceutical partners as a rich source of unique subpopulations of cancer for development of high value therapeutic programs.  MRL will also focus on its TargetX drug discovery and development platform that has already resulted in IND-enabling partnered programs to be announced later in the year.  Furthermore, MRL will continue its personalized medicine developmental programs currently in prospective clinical trials with key cancer centers.

About Molecular Response

Molecular Response is dedicated to the advance of high value therapeutics through intelligently designed, biomarker driven strategies. Our goal is to reduce risk and cost of targeted therapeutics through key risk-shared partnerships by use of fully characterized efficacy models and clinically relevant molecular response marker data to create a clinically predictive knowledge base while fully integrated into existing pharmaceutical development processes and programs; Our results allow for the most informed decisions with best chance of success to advance therapeutic programs. For additional information please visit www.molecularresponse.com.

About Crown Bioscience, Inc.

Founded in 2006, Crown Bioscience is a premier drug discovery and development service company providing cutting-edge translational platforms and cost effective drug discovery solutions for its biotech and pharmaceutical partners in dedicated therapeutic areas: Oncology and Metabolic Disease. Our proprietary HuPrime®, HuKemia®, HuBase, HuMark, HuTrial and HuSignature platforms enable unique lead optimization and translational strategies to deliver superior clinical candidates. Headquartered in Santa Clara California, Crown Bioscience has operations in China (Beijing and Jiangsu Taicang), United Kingdom (Crown Bioscience UK Ltd. In Nottingham) and the USA (NC) with business offices in Boston, Princeton, RTP, Phoenix, Milan and Shanghai. For more information, please visit http://www.crownbio.com.

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SOURCE Molecular Response