Ipswich, MA and Witterswil, Switzerland -- November 28, 2008 -- New England Biolabs (NEB) and Covalys Biosciences announce that they have reached an agreement by which NEB secures worldwide exclusive rights to patents and technology developed by Covalys Biosciences.  This agreement enables NEB to develop, manufacture and commercialize products based on a suite of self-labeling protein tags originally developed by the laboratory of Professor Kai Johnsson of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and successfully commercialized by Covalys Biosciences.
 
The technologies licensed from Covalys Biosciences include access to four orthogonal protein-labeling systems: SNAP-tag™, CLIP-tag™, ACP-tag and MCP-tag, together with the largest collection of cell permeable and non-permeable substrates for biochemical and cellular labeling.  These tags and substrates enable investigators to quickly and easily covalently attach a wide array of chemical probes to proteins, thereby enabling their visualization and characterization in live cells, cell lysates and in biochemical analysis.
 
Jim Ellard, Chief Executive Officer at NEB, describes this move as “vital to NEB’s strategic vision of diversifying our product offering and developing new technologies in a variety of emerging fields, including cellular imaging and analysis.”

Dr. Peter Nathan, NEB’s Director of Global Business Development, continues, “We see this as an enabling technology for the research community and anticipate that researchers will be able to use these simple and innovative systems for answering fundamental questions in cell biology in new ways.”
 
Andreas Brecht, Chief Executive Officer at Covalys Biosciences, comments, “We are delighted that NEB, one of the leading companies in the life sciences, has chosen to adopt our protein labeling technology and look forward to a fruitful partnership. We are convinced that the partnership with NEB will be an excellent choice for our customers.”

NEB plans to launch a line of new products based on the Covalys technology at the 48th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco, CA.
 
About New England Biolabs, Inc.

Established in the mid 1970’s, New England Biolabs, Inc. leads the industry in the discovery and production of enzymes for molecular biology applications and now offers the largest selection of recombinant and native enzymes for genome research. NEB continues to expand its product offerings into areas related to PCR, cloning, expression and purification, and is focusing on strengthening alliances that enable new technologies to reach key market sectors. New England Biolabs is a privately held company headquartered in Ipswich, MA and has extensive worldwide distribution through a network of exclusive distributors, agents and five subsidiaries located in Canada, China, Germany, Japan and the UK. For more information about New England Biolabs visit www.neb.com.
 
About Covalys Biosciences AG