UK Start-up Company CSO Presents at International Biotechnology Industry Convention

LEXINGTON, KY (May 11, 2009) - John Littleton, a UK pharmacy professor and chief scientific officer of Naprogenix Inc., will present his new plant-based technology at the BIO International Convention, “Heat, Fuel, Feed the World,” in Atlanta, May 18-21. The invitation to present was one of only two dozen invitations extended from the editors at Genetic Engineering.

Littleton’s talk, titled “Reinventing Plant-based Drug Discovery to Unblock the Pharmaceutical Pipeline,” will describe how plants have evolved defensive metabolites that could be useful as drugs and how this information might be used to direct the evolution of plant cells to improve drugs.

Founded in 2002, Naprogenix is identifying active compounds in native plants which have potential value as drugs using its proprietary Natural Products Genomics™(NPG) technology. The development of Littleton’s NPG research was funded in part by the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center at UK.

Also attending BIO is UK Commercialization & Economic Development Vice President Len Heller, Dean Harvey, Deb Weis, Taunya Phillips, and Tina Carpenter, Engineering Associate Dean Eric Grulke, KTRDC Director Maelor Davies and representatives from Naprogenix, Scout Diagnostics and Coldstream Laboratories Inc.

UK will be part of the BIO international exhibition under the umbrella of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and will co-sponsor an invitation only reception hosted by Governor Steven Beshear. An estimated 20,000 biotech industry leaders are expected to attend the convention at the Georgia World Congress Center.

About Naprogenix
Naprogenix is commercializing its bioprospecting technology targeting the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and agrochemical industries. Their proprietary research is aimed at discovering novel plant-based natural products through Natural Products Genomics™ (NPG). NPG is a functional genomics platform technology that combines a novel mutagenic strategy with a uniquely efficient cell culture screening process. Its objective is to identify naturally-occurring biologically active metabolites in plants, and to isolate and express the gene sequences that are responsible for their production. www.naprogenix.com