SAN DIEGO, CA, Nov. 3, 2009 (Marketwire) --

SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/03/09 -- Calmune Corporation, a privately held biotechnology company developing novel antibodies to address unmet clinical needs, announced today that it has established an exclusive research collaboration with Crucell N.V. (EURONEXT: CRXL) (NASDAQ: CRXL) (SWISS: CRX), a global biopharmaceutical company based in Leiden, the Netherlands, focusing on research development, production and marketing of vaccines, proteins and antibodies that prevent and/or treat infectious diseases. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under this collaboration, Calmune will use SEBVI(TM), a proprietary technology to prepare a panel of potent, high-affinity human monoclonal antibodies (hMabs) against a pre-defined, undisclosed infectious disease target. Crucell will have the option to exclusively license these hMabs for further evaluation as development candidates, and to develop any that meet its required profile. Calmune will receive payments from Crucell at different stages of the discovery and development process, as well as a royalty on sales of products that incorporate antibodies generated by Calmune.

By exploiting the power of the human immune response, Calmune's SEBVI(TM) technology allows natural, high-affinity, fully human antibodies against microbial targets to be efficiently recovered from Epstein Barr virus-transformed memory B cells.

Dr. Jaap Goudsmit, Chief Scientific Officer of Crucell, said, "Calmune's demonstrated technological expertise in the generation of potent human monoclonal antibodies is a valuable complement to Crucell's existing research programs and opens the door to the development of new therapeutics for infectious diseases."

Dr. Anthony Williamson, CEO of Calmune, and Dr. Dennis Burton, Chairman of the Board, commented in a joint statement, "We are delighted to be working together with Crucell, which has an established commitment to developing and marketing therapeutic antibodies against infectious diseases. This collaboration is an important external endorsement of our technology, and we are confident we will be able to deliver candidate antibodies that meet Crucell's requirements. We would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of Tilocor, our principal investor, towards Calmune's emergence as an innovative therapeutic antibody company."

About Calmune

Calmune Corporation is a privately held biotechnology company developing antibody therapeutics to address unmet clinical needs. The company was founded in 2006 in San Diego, California, by three members of The Scripps Research Institute.