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A-CUBE Announces Collaborative Research Agreement With ProtevoBio

BELMONT, Calif., March 24, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A-CUBE Inc. today announced that it has formed a Collaborative Research Agreement (CRA) with Sunnyvale-based ProtevoBio Inc. to design and construct three biobetter therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). Terms were not disclosed.
/ Source: GlobeNewswire

BELMONT, Calif., March 24, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A-CUBE Inc. today announced that it has formed a Collaborative Research Agreement (CRA) with Sunnyvale-based ProtevoBio Inc. to design and construct three biobetter therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). Terms were not disclosed.

"As a result of this exciting collaboration with ProtevoBio, A-CUBE now has sophisticated wetlab antibody engineering skills to expand our therapeutic monoclonal antibody program," said A-CUBE founder and President, Nobu Ota, PhD. "We are starting with a modest collaboration that we anticipate will expand in the future. A-CUBE focuses on the in silico design and intellectual property side of the equation, and ProtevoBio now provides us with antibody development, engineering and characterization."

"The A-CUBE monoclonal program is both unique and scientifically interesting," said Jeng Her, PhD, founder and CEO of ProtevoBio. "The ability to have in silico Rational Antigen Design capability that identifies biologically functional novel peptides that can additionally gain Composition of Matter IP is very powerful. We can move quickly on these projects and add a lot of value to both companies by these efforts," said Her, who co-founded KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a therapeutic antibody company which has raised over $76 mil in private rounds since its inception in 2001. The protein-protein interaction selection system, the antibody Humaneering™ and the antibody affinity maturation technologies that he co-invented with Dr. Robert Balint and other scientists, have led to filing of 18 patents in U.S. and worldwide, and became the technology cornerstones for the pipeline of antibody drugs for inflammatory, oncology and infectious diseases at KaloBios, including KB001, an anti-Pseudomonas antibody licensed to Sanofi Pasteur in Jan, 2010. In addition to KaloBios, he was also a founding scientist and VP of R&D at Multispan, Inc., a company dedicated to developing GPCR-related specialty reagents and providing superior services for cell-based drug profiling, based on a mammalian expression system he co-developed.

A-CUBE

A-CUBE Inc. is a venture capital backed company (funded by JAIC and Mr. Ben du Pont's yet2ventures.com) which uses proprietary in silico algorithms to predict novel drug targets. This technology was developed by company founder and President Nobu Ota, PhD, and has been used to develop various monoclonal antibodies and candidate DNA vaccines for the treatment of diseases.

JAIC

JAIC America is a venture capital firm based in the Silicon Valley, focused on early stage investments in the Mobile/Communications, Digital Media, Life Science and Cleantech sectors. JAIC is part of Japan Asia Investment Co. (JAIC) group, a premier venture capital and private equity firm listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with $1.3 Billion assets under management. JAIC America was established in January 1999 and since then we have actively invested in the U.S. JAIC has successfully created several U.S.-Japan cross-border business models and have the know-how to bring U.S. technologies, services, and business models to Japan. JAIC tries to keep the right "management team - investor" balance to engender a productive outcome.  For more information, visit .

yet2ventures.com

yet2ventures.com provides intellectual property consulting and licensing services to world-class clients around the globe. yet2.com Inc. and its online marketplace were founded in 1999 to promote Open Innovation, with original investments from Siemens, Bayer, Honeywell, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, and NTT Leasing. The privately held company has offices in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The web site now has over 120,000 registered marketplace users including many of the Fortune 500 and over 16,000 smaller technology companies. In addition to its core team, yet2.com has created a wide network of Open Innovation partners covering many of the technology-rich countries around the world as well as relationships with open innovation organizations, technical expert networks, SME networks, technical magazines, online technical communities, and technology brokers. These provide market-wide access to technologies and needs in countries such as Russia, China, India, Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, the U.S., and the EU. For more information, visit or contact Tim Bernstein 1-781-972-0600.

ProtevoBio, Inc.

ProtevoBio provides services and co-development opportunities with a focus on antibody and protein engineering for biosimilars, biobetters, innovative antibodies and Fc fusion proteins.  The privately held company has developed the HiMAb process for generation of high affinity, human-like antibodies and stable cell lines with high specific productivity.  In addition, the highly efficient mammalian expression systems are ideal for production of soluble antigens with native folding/epitopes for immunization, as well as engineered cells with membrane-anchored antigens for screening and characterization of functional antibodies. 

CONTACT: Company Contact: Nigel Ten Fleming, PhD Chief Executive Officer A-CUBE Inc. 530 Harbor Blvd Belmont, CA, 94002 Tel: (415)-515-7614 Email: Nigel@ACubeinsilico.com Website: http://www.acube.cc