Sigma® Life Science launches oncology disease model cell lines

Sigma Life Science, the innovative biological products and services research business of Sigma-Aldrich® (Nasdaq:SIAL), today announced the addition of new genetically modified cancer cells to the Company’s range of high-quality cell lines. These human knockout and knock-in oncology cell lines, created using Sigma’s proprietary CompoZr® Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) technology which received a silver medal as a Top Ten Innovations of 2010 from The Scientist magazine, offer researchers cellular models of cancer that are expected to enhance development of drugs for personalized medicine.

Sigma’s CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are designed to enable basic research and high content, high throughput screening of compounds and biologics. The Company believes that these cell lines will accelerate the development of personalized medicine through target validation, identification of mechanistic actions of drugs and investigation of disease development, progression and remission. This innovative product should enable researchers to study the effect of the mutation in its natural genomic context, using isogenic parental cells to help evaluate specific modifications without complications arising from background mutations. The Company will start its offering with cell lines that model colorectal and lung cancer. Later this year this portfolio of disease model cell lines is expected to expand with the introduction of a panel of genetically modified cell lines that model breast cancer.

“CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are our latest addition to what we anticipate will become the most comprehensive collection of modified human cell lines with a significantly higher degree of predictability for drug function and biological responses than conventional cell lines,” said Supriya Shivakumar, Global Marketing Manager at Sigma Life Science. “By harnessing the power of our award-winning CompoZr ZFN technology, we have generated cancer cell lines with precise, stable and heritable gene knockouts and knockins, providing scientists with innovative tools to enable the development of drugs for personalized medicine.”

Cautionary statement: The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as “expected,” “believes”, “should enable”, or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from products derived therefrom. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines will assist the Company to achieve any particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular, management’s expectations regarding products associated with CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company’s ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company’s assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich’s current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.