HOUSTON, Texas - July 2001 - Cell>Point, L.L.C. executed an exclusive worldwide Patent and Technology License Agreement with The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center for ethylenedicysteine ("EC") drug conjugate technology which functions as a chemical bridge linking diagnostic radio-tracers or therapeutic radionuclides to ligand disease target seekers or novel FDA approved drugs. Technetium-^99m-EC-deoxyglucose ("^99mTc-EC-DG") will be the first of many compounds to emerge from the EC technology portfolio. The Phase I clinical trial for ^99mTc-EC-DG will be conducted at M.D. Anderson. ^99mTc-EC-DG produces a metabolic imaging marker that can diagnose hyper-cellular activity of cancer cells using standard Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT). The use of ^99mTc in most of the EC Technology applications will yield certain advantages over other radioisotopes. ^99mTc is widely available, very inexpensive compared to most other Radioisotopes and has a six hour half-life. This will make ^99mTc-EC-DG ideal for sequential time phased imaging. The company believes that the development of ^99mTc-EC-DG will provide certain credibility for the technology platform and help demonstrate the downstream potential for EC technology.
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