Press Releases

Somerset, N.J., June 15, 2005 – Cardinal Health, the leading provider of products and services supporting the health care industry, today announced that its patented GPExTM (Gene Product Expression) technology will be used by PSMA Development Company LLC (PDC) to produce a monoclonal antibody that targets prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA), a biological marker found on the surface of prostate cancer cells. PDC, a joint venture between Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PGNX) and Cytogen Corporation (Nasdaq: CYTO), is developing a human monoclonal antibody that can be used to deliver a variety of therapeutic payloads (including toxins and therapeutic radionuclides) to cells expressing PSMA. 

“We are very pleased with the progress made while working with PDC,” said Paul Weiss, Ph.D, president of Cardinal Health’s biopharmaceutical development services center in Middleton, Wisconsin. “While this is the first GPEx cell line sale agreement, we developed the GPEx technology in a way that its process integrates well with our biopharmaceutical manufacturing capability to allow companies to get their biopharmaceutical products into clinical development more rapidly.”

Cardinal Health’s GPEx technology enables rapid genetic engineering of stable mammalian cell lines. These cell lines have high gene copy numbers for enhanced protein yields, permitting efficient pilot and large-scale production of monoclonal antibodies and other therapeutic recombinant proteins.

Through insertion of multiple copies of the gene(s), GPEx can generate, in as little as half the time required using traditional methods, stable cell lines that exhibit significantly higher levels of expression than those cell lines generated by other methods.

“Working with Cardinal Health’s GPEx technology has demonstrated to us that it offers a number of distinct advantages,” stated Paul Maddon, M.D, Ph.D, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Science Officer of Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. “We believe that the cell line we are acquiring as part of this Agreement will allow us to produce fully human monoclonal antibody for early clinical development, and also potentially to use this cell line for manufacturing larger quantities of the antibody as our needs increase.”

Financial terms of the agreement between PDC and Cardinal Health were not disclosed.

About Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health, Inc. (www.cardinalhealth.com) is the leading provider of products and services supporting the health care industry. Cardinal Health develops, manufactures, packages and markets products for patient care; develops drug-delivery technologies; distributes pharmaceuticals, medical-surgical and laboratory supplies; and offers consulting and other services that improve quality and efficiency in health care. Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health employs more than 55,000 people on six continents and produces annual revenues of more than $65 billion.
Except for historical information, all other information in this news release consists of forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, anticipated or implied. The most significant of these uncertainties are described in Cardinal Health's Form 10-K, Form 8-K and Form 10-Q reports (including all amendments to those reports) and exhibits to those reports, and include (but are not limited to) the costs, difficulties, and uncertainties related to the integration of acquired businesses, the loss of one or more key customer or supplier relationships or changes to the terms of those relationships, changes in the distribution patterns or reimbursement rates for health-care products and/or services, the results, consequences, effects or timing of any inquiry or investigation by any regulatory authority or any legal and administrative proceedings, the impact of previously announced restatements, difficulties in opening new facilities or fully utilizing existing capacity, difficulties and uncertainties associated with business model transitions, including the conversion of margin generated from branded pharmaceutical manufacturers to non-contingent consideration, and general economic and market conditions. Cardinal Health undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement.