Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. announced today at the 2nd Annual BioPartnering Asia Conference in Tokyo that it has signed a collaborative research agreement with Japan Tobacco Inc. Under the agreement, Japan Tobacco will provide funding to Sangamo in exchange for the use of Sangamo's Universal GeneTools™ in the validation of novel gene targets for drug discovery. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"This agreement marks the continued expansion of Sangamo's Universal GeneTools technology platform into the pharmaceutical research and development process and our first relationship in Japan," said Edward Lanphier, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are very pleased to include Japan Tobacco in the growing list of major pharmaceutical companies that are utilizing
Sangamo’s technology to assist in their drug development efforts."

Sangamo's Universal GeneTools technology platform enables the rational design and rapid generation of highly specific zinc finger proteins (ZFPs), transcription factors that can selectively recognize and regulate any target gene or DNA sequence. These engineered ZFPs are being used to accelerate the functional analysis of newly discovered genes and the validation of clinically relevant gene targets thereby providing pharmaceutical researchers with a powerful tool in the search for novel, more effective therapeutics. Expressed sequence tags (ESTs), the short DNA sequences derived from genomic research, contain sufficient information for the effective design of a ZFP capable of regulating the expression of a target gene in both cell-based and transgenic animal model systems. Sangamo has established Universal GeneTools collaborations with Pfizer, SmithKline Beecham, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, Berlex Biosciences, Bayer Corporation, GlaxoWellcome and DuPont Pharmaceuticals.

Sangamo BioSciences, a privately held biotechnology company, is developing its ZFP technology platform for human therapeutic, plant agriculture and clinical diagnostic product applications. Universal Gene Regulation refers to the development of ZFPs as pharmaceutical drug candidates that can control the expression of disease-related genes. In addition, plants can be genetically
modified with engineered ZFPs to produce novel transgenic crops. The company’s Universal GeneTools are being used in drug discovery to accelerate the discovery, functional analysis and validation of gene targets. Finally, Sangamo's Universal Gene Identification utilizes ZFPs to exploit opportunities in the emerging field of clinical gene diagnostics.

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