BioAmber and CELEXION Announce Exclusive Licensing Partnership

MINNEAPOLIS, MN, March 15 /PRNewswire/ - BioAmber, the market leader in biobased succinic acid, has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with CELEXION LLC for technology related to the production of adipic acid and other chemical intermediates. The current market for adipic acid is close to 3 million tons per year, worth approximately $8 billion at current market prices.

Over the past year, BioAmber has successfully applied its breakthrough succinic acid purification process to adipic acid. Through the licensing deal with CELEXION, BioAmber will leverage its succinic know-how, infrastructure, partnerships and customer base to accelerate the development of biobased adipic acid. BioAmber has also established a state of the art research and development facility in Plymouth, Minnesota with capabilities in molecular biology, fermentation and analytical chemistry to support its adipic acid program.

"CELEXION's technology is a perfect fit for the leadership we have developed in commercializing biobased succinic acid," said Jean-Francois Huc, CEO of BioAmber. "CELEXION's highly attractive metabolic pathway, coupled with our novel purification process and scale-up capabilities, gives us a clear path to biobased adipic acid that, like our biobased succinic, is lower cost and has a better environmental footprint than the current petroleum route."

"Renewable chemicals such as biobased adipic acid will become critical building blocks of the future economy. Given BioAmber's leadership position in succinic acid and the natural extension of their assets to adipic acid, we are very pleased to partner with BioAmber for commercialization of our adipic acid technology," said Dr. Brian M. Baynes, CEO of CELEXION.

About BioAmber
BioAmber is a US registered renewable chemistry company with an extensive IP portfolio and know-how covering the production, purification and use of biobased succinic acid and derivatives including modified PBS, a biodegradable polymer with superior heat resistance and processability. BioAmber has the world's first dedicated biobased succinic acid plant and has partnerships with market leaders Cargill, Mitsui & Co and DuPont Applied Biosciences. The company's head office is located in Montreal, Canada, with research labs in Minneapolis, MN, a sales office in Shanghai, China and a production plant in Pomacle, France. For more information, see www.bio-amber.com.

About CELEXION
CELEXION LLC is a bioengineering company that develops powerful platform technologies and products for partners in the pharmaceutical, industrial, agricultural, and life science research sectors. The company's technologies include the SECANT platform for engineering high performance protein products, a billion-member library of human IgG antibodies for biotherapeutic lead generation, enzymatic pathways for synthesis of a variety of high-value materials from wastes and other inexpensive precursors, a novel family of enzymes for manipulation of chromosome-sized DNA, as well as a variety of other tools. The company is based in Cambridge, MA, USA and financed by Flagship Ventures and GE Healthcare Financial Services. For further information, please visit our website at www.celexionbio.com.

CELEXION is a registered trademark and SECANT is a pending trademark application of Celexion LLC.

SOURCE BIOAMBER INC.