Pall to acquire chromatography business from Ciphergen

EAST HILLS, NY, Oct. 28, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Pall Corp. will acquire the BioSepra Process Division from Ciphergen Biosystems Inc. for about $32 million, net of cash and debt. The transaction is expected to close within 45 days.

The BioSepra Process Division develops, manufactures and markets chromatography sorbents that greatly simplify protein purification development and significantly improve biopharmaceutical manufacturing productivity.

Pall chairman and CEO Eric Krasnoff said, "Biosepra is a welcome addition to Pall's Life Sciences business. Their innovative and broad range of chromatography chemistries fit in well with our significant market position in drug discovery and protein purification. We are very pleased to strengthen Pall's ability to serve the needs of our Biotechnology customers."

Pall and Ciphergen also announced an alliance to develop and promote Ciphergen's patented SELDI ProteinChip^® technology as a bridge between the research lab and large scale drug production. This technology will be used to optimize chromatography resin selection for protein purification.

William E. Rich, president and CEO of Ciphergen, added: "We are excited about working with Pall and their customers to continue expansion of our pioneering work in Process Proteomics in order to speed process development using our ProteinChip Systems for protein purification and expression optimization and process monitoring."

Pall plans to establish Process Proteomics Service Centers that will assist customers in selecting and optimizing sorbents and membranes for the purification of proteins used in the production of therapeutic proteins and other bioprocess applications. The addition of these sorbent technologies will enable Pall to provide a highly integrated solution for the bioprocess separations market.

About Pall Corp.
Pall Corp. (www.pall.com) is the leader in the rapidly growing fields of filtration, separations and purification. Pall's business is organized around two broad markets: Life Sciences and Industrial. The company provides leading-edge products to meet the demanding needs of customers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, transfusion medicine, semiconductors, municipal drinking water, aerospace and broad industrial markets. Total revenues are $1.77 billion. The company headquarters are in East Hills, NY, and it has operations in about 40 countries.

About Ciphergen
Ciphergen's Biosystems Division develops, manufactures and markets a family of ProteinChip Systems and services for clinical, research, and process proteomics applications, as well as a broad range of bioseparations media for protein purification and large scale production. ProteinChip Systems enable protein discovery, characterization, identification and assay development to provide researchers with predictive, multi-marker assay capabilities and a better understanding of biological function at the protein level. Ciphergen's Diagnostics Division is dedicated to the discovery of protein biomarkers and panels of biomarkers and their development into protein molecular diagnostic tests that improve patient care; and to providing collaborative R&D services through its Biomarker Discovery Center^® laboratories for biomarker discovery for new diagnostic tests as well as pharmacoproteomic services for improved drug toxicology, efficacy and theranostic assays.

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