CellzDirect Inc. (CDI), a global leader in hepatic cell products and in vitro contract services, has entered into a long term exclusive strategic partnership with Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences, Inc. (APS).

Under the terms of the agreement, APS will be focused exclusively on producing cryopreserved human hepatocytes to supplement CellzDirect's hepatic products inventory. CellzDirect will now also serve as an exclusive distributor for APS's new medium for the thawing of cryopreserved hepatocytes (Cryopreserved Hepatocyte Recovery Medium) which, when used with the CDI APS cryopreserved hepatocytes, yield cells with high viability and attachment efficiency.

The central goal of the collaboration is to meet the growing demand for high quality cryopreserved human hepatocytes, especially "attachable" cryopreserved human hepatocytes needed for enzyme induction, drug transporters, and in vitro hepatotoxicity screening studies in the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA has recently accepted the use of attachable cryopreserved human hepatocytes for use in enzyme induction drug-drug interaction studies.

Scott Edelman, president and CEO of CellzDirect, Inc., stated, "We are thrilled to partner with Dr Li and his team at APS. Our combined scientific expertise with hepatocytes and our strong commitment to making high quality human hepatocytes more readily available promises to have a profound affect on in vitro research."

"We are extremely excited about our new technologies which allow us to routinely produce cryopreserved hepatocytes with the attachment efficiency, morphology, and biochemical properties of freshly isolated cells. The quality of our new cryopreserved human hepatocyte lots is already being touted as the new standard for industry. The partnership with CellzDirect will enable us to provide these pristine cells to researchers around the world," stated Dr. Li.