New Tools for Understanding Biological Pathways and Accelerating Drug Development for Personalized Medicine

Sigma Life Science announces the addition of new genetically modified cancer cells to the Company’s range of high-quality cell lines. These human knockout and knock-in oncology cell lines, created using Sigma’s proprietary CompoZr® Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) technology which received a silver medal as a Top Ten Innovations of 2010 from The Scientist magazine, offer researchers cellular models of cancer that are expected to enhance development of drugs for personalized medicine.

Sigma’s CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are designed to enable basic research and high content, high throughput screening of compounds and biologics. The Company believes that these cell lines will accelerate the development of personalized medicine through target validation, identification of mechanistic actions of drugs and investigation of disease development, progression and remission. This innovative product should enable researchers to study the effect of the mutation in its natural genomic context, using isogenic parental cells to help evaluate specific modifications without complications arising from background mutations. The Company will start its offering with cell lines that model colorectal and lung cancer. Later this year this portfolio of disease model cell lines is expected to expand with the introduction of a panel of genetically modified cell lines that model breast cancer.

“CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are our latest addition to what we anticipate will become the most comprehensive collection of modified human cell lines with a significantly higher degree of predictability for drug function and biological responses than conventional cell lines,” said Supriya Shivakumar, Global Marketing Manager at Sigma Life Science. “By harnessing the power of our award-winning CompoZr ZFN technology, we have generated cancer cell lines with precise, stable and heritable gene knockouts and knockins, providing scientists with innovative tools to enable the development of drugs for personalized medicine.”