Protea Announces Expansion of Patent Portfolio

Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. ("Protea") announced today that the George Washington University has been awarded two additional patents for its LAESI technology platform, for which Protea is the exclusive licensee. The first patent is titled "Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization (LAESI) for Atmospheric Pressure, In Vivo, and Imaging Mass Spectrometry" (U.S. Patent #8,487,244) and the second patent is titled "Three-Dimensional Molecular Imaging By Infrared Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry" (U.S. Patent # 8,487,246). Both patents were issued on July 16, 2013.

"We are pleased that these two additional patents have been issued," commented Steve Turner, Protea's CEO. "LAESI represents a revolutionary technology to rapidly identify the molecular products of living cells, due to its ability to perform 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional molecular imaging, all without sample preparation or the addition of chemical matrices. Even live cells and bacterial colonies can be analyzed with LAESI. Collectively these capabilities will prove invaluable to pharmaceutical and life science research laboratories worldwide."

LAESI-MS (Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry) was invented in the laboratory of Akos Vertes, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry at the George Washington University and exclusively licensed to Protea. LAESI enables rapidly obtaining mass spectrometry data profiles of biomolecules present in cells. LAESI analysis can be performed on tissue sections identical to those used in traditional histological staining and examination, without the need for sample preparation that can lead to sample loss and contamination. LAESI enables the generation of direct, rapid, and reproducible data, decreasing both the time and cost to obtain mass spectrometric analysis of biological samples.