Singapore, Mar 09, 2010: Humacyte and Xcellerex have entered into an initial strategic collaboration for Xcellerex to develop a novel manufacturing process that will enable the production of Humacyte's lead regenerative medicine product using Xcellerex's XDR single use bioreactor system in its FlexFactory.

Humacyte said its product is a large diameter vascular graft that is based on its innovative and proprietary platform technology for engineering human, extracellular matrix-based tissues that have properties that are similar to native tissues.

Humacyte's vascular grafts represent a breakthrough that will first be used for arterio-venous access in patients on hemodialysis and eventually would be used as a replacement of diseased or damaged blood vessels. Xcellerex will provide development expertise and product manufacturing in exchange for manufacturing development fees from Humacyte. Humacyte will utilize the initial grafts produced under this collaboration for preclinical development, and the parties may continue their collaboration for the development of large scale manufacturing of vascular grafts for transplantation for clinical and commercial use.

"We continue to see the expanding applicability of our technologies to help treat human diseases in not just the over 20 clinical phase drugs manufactured in our technology, but also through such novel applications such as in enabling Humacyte's unique vascular graft technology."

"We are pleased to utilize our unique manufacturing technology and development know-how to enable the rapid development of a potent single-use manufacturing platform for Humacyte. Our technology offers Humacyte a cost-effective and novel manufacturing solution for their full pre-clinical and clinical development needs through to commercial production, using our FlexFactory platform. We are excited to see our novel single use manufacturing technologies applied in such an important application that holds such great promise for significant advances in improving treatment options for patients," stated Joseph Zakrzewski, Xcellerex's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "We continue to see the expanding applicability of our technologies to help treat human diseases in not just the over 20 clinical phase drugs manufactured in our technology, but also through such novel applications such as in enabling Humacyte's unique vascular graft technology."

"Our exciting collaboration with Xcellerex will both advance our novel vascular graft for transplantation technologies, but also enable us to move more rapidly into clinical development upon the achievement of key development and preclinical milestones. We are looking forward to working with Xcellerex on this critical novel development and manufacturing program," said Laura Niklason, Humacyte's Founder.