NeoPharm Inc has entered into a non-exclusive worldwide distribution and marketing agreement for NeoPhectin and NeoPhectin-AT with Nippon Genetics Co Ltd. Nippon Genetics will market and promote the NeoPhectin line of products to its customers worldwide.

NeoPhectin, a novel in vitro transfection reagent, is an outgrowth of NeoPharm's lipid development programme and uses NeoPharm's proprietary cationic (positively charged) cardiolipin technology. NeoPhectin-AT is NeoPharm's in vivo transfection reagent for nucleic acids delivery including siRNA, and is designed for animal testing. Both NeoPhectin and NeoPhectin-AT were developed by NeoPharm at the Company's Waukegan, Illinois research and development facility, a release from NeoPharm said.

"We are pleased to announce this additional distribution and marketing channel," said Gregory P Young, NeoPharm's president and CEO. "Nippon Genetics has been marketing and distributing genetic engineering products since 1988. This provides another avenue in which we can provide the scientific community with our NeoPhectin products and hopefully generate additional cash to promote our ongoing drug development programme," he concluded.

NeoPharm is a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company involved research, discovery, and commercialization of new and innovative cancer drugs for therapeutic applications.

Nippon Genetics, based in Tokyo, Japan, and with offices in Santa Clara, California, specializes in sales and marketing of laboratory products and reagents for genetic engineering research.