ProdiGene, Inc. and Genencor International, Inc. announced today that they have entered into a strategic alliance to develop industrial enzymes from transgenic plants.

The alliance combines ProdiGene's expertise in expressing recombinant proteins in transgenic plants with Genencor's proprietary industrial enzyme technologies. ProdiGene will receive funding from Genencor for research and additional consideration on new product opportunities.

"We look forward to working with ProdiGene to develop and market new industrial enzymes," says Dr. Karl Sanford, Vice President of Technology Development for Genencor. "Both parties will benefit from the combination of ProdiGene's transgenic plant expression system and Genencor's enzyme technologies and extensive marketing network."

ProdiGene uses plants, such as corn, to manufacture a full array of active and complex recombinant proteins efficiently and economically. Plant seeds can serve as storage facilities and protein production scale-up is as simple as planting more seeds. The seeds can be used as a delivery system, or the proteins can be extracted from them for use in other ways. Overall, plants offer the least expensive source of crude proteins, one of the basic reasons why raw material costs for recombinant proteins from plants are below the cost of other production systems.

"We are very pleased to enter into this agreement with Genencor International, truly a world leader in the industrial enzyme field. By applying ProdiGene's protein expression technology with Genencor's strong manufacturing, marketing and distribution capabilities, we will be introducing innovative recombinant products into the industrial ~ markets that were not feasible to produce by traditional methods," said John A. Howard, president and chief executive officer of ProdiGene, Inc.

Prodigene, headquartered in College Station, Texas, is a biotechnology company that develops industrial and pharmaceutical proteins from plants. The company was the world's first to successfully commercialize recombinant proteins from genetically engineered plants. ProdiGene holds a series of patents and has the commercial expertise that provides it with a leadership position in this exciting new field.

Genencor International, Inc., based in Rochester, New York, is one of the world's largest developers and manufacturers of industrial enzymes. The company employs more than 1,000   people worldwide and operates state-of-the-art industrial biotechnology research, development and manufacturing facilities in Europe, the Americas and the Asia Pacific region.

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