LifeMap Sciences, BioTime to acquire XenneX

BioTime, Inc. (NYSE Amex:BTX) and its wholly owned subsidiary LifeMap Sciences today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenneX, Inc. through a merger of XenneX into LifeMap Sciences. The acquisition is expected to close within thirty days.    

XenneX holds the exclusive, worldwide licenses to market GeneCards^® and PanDaTox. GeneCards^® is a searchable, integrated, database of human genes that provides concise genomic, transcriptomic, genetic, proteomic, functional and disease related information, on all known and predicted human genes. GeneCards^® was developed by a world-leading bioinformatics team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. PanDaTox is a recently developed, searchable, database that can be used to identify genes and intergenic regions that are unclonable in E. coli, to aid in the discovery of new antibiotics and biotechnologically beneficial functional genes, and to improve the efficiency of metabolic engineering.

Since 2003, XenneX has been generating revenue from customers worldwide including biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies, as well as organizations dealing with biotechnology intellectual property. GeneCards^® and PanDaTox are marketed by XenneX under a license from Yeda Research and Development Company Ltd, the Technology Transfer Company of the Weizmann Institute.

Through the merger, XenneX stockholders will receive approximately 1,362,589 shares of LifeMap common stock, which will represent approximately 13% of the LifeMap common stock outstanding upon the closing of the transaction. XenneX shareholders will also receive approximately 448,430 BioTime common shares as part of the transaction.

Separately, LifeMap Sciences announced that it anticipates acquiring a license from Yeda to market the new MalaCards database of human diseases. Like GeneCards^® and PanDaTox, MalaCards has been developed by the Weizmann Institute and is expected to be launched at the end of 2012.