Investment in Asterion

RNS Number:7618Q
Biofusion PLC
26 March 2008


For immediate release                                              26 March 2008



                                 BIOFUSION PLC
                         ("Biofusion" or "the Company")

                        £265,000 INVESTMENT IN ASTERION

Biofusion plc (AIM: BFN), the university IP commercialisation company that turns
world class research into world-class business, today announces that it has made
an additional  investment of £265,000 in Asterion Limited ("Asterion"), a
portfolio company from Biofusion's University of Sheffield agreement. This
brings Biofusion's investment to £550,000 in this company. Asterion is
developing a range of novel therapeutic proteins that will improve the current
treatment options for patients with chronic diseases. Using its novel, patented
ProFuse(TM) therapeutic platform, Asterion is generating and developing
long-acting biopharmaceutical products that can be administered at a lower dose,
less frequently and with fewer side effects than existing marketed drugs.

The company already has an agreement with the French pharmaceutical company
Ipsen Limited ("Ipsen") to use its platform in the development of a new Human
Growth Hormone product. Results to date have been very promising and Asterion
anticipates that the product will enter Phase 1 trials within the next 12 to 18
months.

Biofusion's investment in Asterion will be used to accelerate the use of the
ProFuse(TM) platform on a number of Asterion developed and owned products and to
further extend the effectiveness of ProFuse(TM).  Following the investment,
Biofusion now owns a 38% shareholding in Asterion.

Commenting on this announcement, David Baynes, Chief Executive Officer of
Biofusion, said: "We are very pleased to be investing additional money into one
of our most exciting portfolio companies.  Asterion has the potential to be of
significant value to its shareholders if the ProFuse(TM) platform continues to
show the quality of results it has to date."

Also commenting on this announcement, Raymond Barlow, Chief Executive Officer of
Asterion, said: "We welcome this funding from Biofusion, which we will use to
invest in some of our leading-edge development programmes to further demonstrate
the broad utility of our technologies."

For further information please contact:
Biofusion                                                    [phone]
David Baynes, CEO

Buchanan Communications                                      [phone]
Mary-Jane Johnson / Lisa Baderoon / Catherine Breen

Nomura Code                                                  [phone]
Phil Walker



About Biofusion

Biofusion was established in 2002 to commercialise university-generated IP.
Biofusion has signed long-term agreements with two of the UK's top ten research
intensive universities (University of Sheffield and Cardiff University) giving a
combined R&D spend attributable to Biofusion of approximately £114 million a
year.

Biofusion's first agreement was a ten-year exclusive arrangement with the
University of Sheffield for the commercialisation of IP owned by the University
in the area of medical life sciences. Biofusion has shareholdings in a portfolio
of Sheffield University spin-out companies including Asterion, Axordia,
Biohydrogen, Lifestyle Choices, Diurnal and Phase Focus. The University of
Sheffield was ranked 5th in the UK for the quality of its life sciences research
and will be spending an estimated £0.5bn of research funding over the lifetime
over the life of the Sheffield Agreement.

In January 2007, Biofusion completed a long-term exclusive agreement with
Cardiff University, to commercialise 100% of all Cardiff University's
research-generated IP.  Biofusion has shareholdings in a portfolio of Cardiff
University spin-out companies including Abcellute, Q-Chip and Morvus. Cardiff
University was ranked 7th in the UK in the most recent research rankings and
will be spending more than £1.0bn of research funding over the lifetime over the
life of the Cardiff Agreement.


About Asterion

Asterion was founded in 2001 to commercialise the inventions generated by
Professors Richard Ross, Peter Artymiuk and Jon Sayers at the University of
Sheffield.  These include novel ways to drastically improve the pharmacological
properties of cytokine- and hormone-based therapeutics. Asterion's technologies
include linking the cytokine to part of its cognate receptor (Asterion's
patented ProFuse(TM) intellectual property).

In December 2003, Asterion licensed is growth hormone programmes to the French
pharmaceutical company Ipsen. Using human growth hormone (hGH) as a model
system, Asterion has demonstrated that it can produce therapeutic proteins that
are potent agonists, which can be dosed far less frequently than commercial
recombinant hGH. Ipsen is currently involved in pre-clinical development of an
hGH agonist, as well as initiating work on a hGH antagonist programme.

Asterion's technologies have tremendous utility and versatility and can be
potentially applied to a large number of cytokine families and other targets to
generate novel, IP-protected, third generation biopharmaceutical products, which
we call AFT(TM) drugs. These products will have superior pharmacological 
profiles that will improve the current treatment options for patients with 
chronic diseases, and offer advantages over other protein fusion approaches and
technologies such as PEGylation and glycosylation.

Asterion's current products are designed to be better than existing, marketed,
best-in-class protein drugs. AFT(TM) drugs improve the profile of existing
marketed biopharmaceuticals by:

*        Enabling a lower dose (potent and selective)

*        Enabling fewer injections (extended half-life)

*        Improving the therapeutic window for drugs that are rapidly cleared by
         the body (e.g. growth hormone) or which have significant dose-limiting 
         side effects (e.g. interferon alpha)

*        Offering improvements in patient compliance

Asterion believes that its products in development will provide several other
key commercial advantages:

*        extended patent protection as proprietary new versions of existing
         therapies

*        faster commercialisation with an improved chance of success and lower
         costs than those typically associated with a new therapeutic protein

*        relatively simple manufacturing using industry-standard cell-based
         protein production processes

*        provide advantages in terms of manufacturing costs and ultimate
         cost-of-goods

In addition to its core programmes, Asterion also seeks to enter into commercial
partnerships with pharma and biotech companies to leverage its expertise and
technology more broadly across a wider range of protein drug targets and
candidates.


                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END

MSCBELLLVXBEBBZ