MENLO PARK, Calif. and PHOENIX, Ariz. - Geron Corporation (Nasdaq:GERN) and Exeter Life Sciences, Inc. announced today the merger of Start Licensing, Inc. (“Start”), a joint venture between Geron and Exeter Life Sciences, and ViaGen, Inc., a subsidiary of Exeter Life Sciences.

Start manages and licenses a broad portfolio of intellectual property rights related to animal reproductive technologies, including animal cloning. ViaGen is a leading animal genomics and livestock cloning firm.

The merger of Start and ViaGen, combines the full breadth of intellectual property rights to nuclear transfer cloning technology, including that developed at the Roslin Institute for cloning Dolly the sheep, with in-house state-of-the-art breeding services and expertise in advanced reproductive technologies, particularly in cloning, to provide a one-stop licensing and operating company.

“We believe it makes sound business sense to join a patent estate for nuclear transfer that has been tested and is recognized as dominant with a leading operating company in the field,” said David Greenwood, Geron’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

“We have built a world-class team of cloning practitioners and have key industry relationships in place,” said Jonathan Thatcher, Exeter Life Science’s chief executive officer. “We are now creating a company that holds the proprietary intellectual property and has demonstrated operating leadership in the field. Customers can secure a license to practice or contract cloning services.”

For agriculture, nuclear transfer technology has important applications. Livestock that have desired genetic traits, such as disease resistance, improved meat quality or yield, or increased milk production, can be chosen and copied by cloning. The purpose of cloning livestock is to produce animals for breeding to incorporate positive genetic traits into herds much more rapidly than could be achieved through conventional breeding and artificial insemination. Cloning could help reduce the use of antibiotics, growth hormones, or other chemicals by producing healthier animals. Research during the last decade has demonstrated that adult clones from nuclear transfer produce normal offspring by natural reproduction.

In January of this year, after six years of investigation and study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that meat and milk from cattle, pigs and goats produced by nuclear transfer, and the naturally reproduced offspring of clones, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred domestic livestock. FDA scientists at the Center for Veterinary Medicine analyzed data, which included over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and further unpublished studies. The final conclusions were supported by all of the data, both published and unpublished. The compiled report was independently reviewed and open to public comment before final publication. For a copy of the FDA report and related links, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/cloning.htm.

In addition, cloning has applications in the production of biopharmaceuticals, such as therapeutic proteins in milk and antibodies in blood.

“Our company has demonstrated expertise in use of nuclear transfer technology to clone animals for better breeding,” said Mark Walton, ViaGen’s chief executive officer. “To date more than a dozen species have been successfully cloned. There is a clear utility for animal cloning, ranging from agricultural applications to the conservation of endangered species and biopharmaceutical production.”

Additional resources:

The following websites provide information on nuclear transfer technology and food.

International Food Information Council:

http://www.ific.org/publications/qa/upload/Q-A-From-Cloned- Animals_Jan2008-Update.pdf (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Food and Drug Administration:

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloningRA_Primer_Final.htm

http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloningRA_Myths_Final.htm

Posted: 08|17|08 at 8:50 am. Filed under: Press Release.