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Beckman Coulter Signs Distribution Agreement with pION INC for Automated Drug Permeability Analysis Fullerton,CA (December 14, 2004) – Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE: BEC) today announced it has entered into a 5-year distribution agreement with pION INC of Woburn, Mass., to deliver a fully validated solution for the automation of in vitro drug permeability measurements. "This agreement expands Beckman Coulter's drug discovery automation product offering into in vitro ADMETox drug screening," said Elias Caro, president of Beckman Coulter's Biomedical Research Division. "By providing pharmaceutical customers the ability to identify, early in the drug development process, sets of drug candidates that have the appropriate permeability characteristics, we can help them to streamline the development process and reduce their overall costs." ADMETox is an acronym for set of analyses that measure the absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination and toxicity of a drug candidate. An important first step in in vitro ADMETox is the determination of passive absorption of a drug candidate through an artificial lipid membrane, a process referred to as PAMPA (Parallel Artificial Membrane Permeability Analysis). This process can be run using different pH levels, mimicking the conditions throughout the human gastrointestinal tract, the predominant location for drug absorption. The PAMPA system can also be designed to mimic the blood/brain barrier to monitor the absorption of drug candidates into the brain. "We have chosen to work with Beckman Coulter because the increasing worldwide demand for our quality permeability measurement solutions requires a partner with a proven record of serving the worldwide scientific community with quality hardware and technical support. That uniquely qualified Beckman Coulter," said Alex Avdeef, Ph.D., pION's chief science and chief executive officer. The new Biomek® FX – ADMETox Workstation, combines Beckman Coulter's market leading Biomek FX liquid handling system with pION's Double-Sink* method for PAMPA analysis. The workstation is controlled by the unique software developed at pION, which is capable of controlling all aspects of the permeability assay including all liquid handling steps on the Biomek FX. Beckman Coulter has validated the automated solution and will distribute it worldwide. The company will partner with pION to provide application-specific customer support and training. pION INC, is a privately held leading manufacturer of instrument systems, tests, and supplies that apply to solution chemistry in the area of in vitro ADMETox. pION's line of products and laboratory services help increase the speed of compound screening while reducing the overall cost of drug discovery. pION tools provide characterization and prediction of absorption, permeability, solubility, dissolution, and other physicochemical and QSAR properties of chemical compounds. For more information, visit www.pion-inc.com. *Double-Sink is a trademark of pION INC.
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