Epistem Plc

Announcement of Collaborative Funding Agreement With Global Health Investment Fund I, LLC

MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - July 22, 2014) - Epistem Holdings Plc (LSE:EHP) (Epistem), the personalised medicine and biotechnology company, is pleased to announce today that it has entered into a collaborative funding agreement with the Global Health Investment Fund I, LLC (GHIF) to support the roll-out of its Genedrive® molecular diagnostic platform as the company's tuberculosis assay enters pivotal field trials in key developing world locations. Under the terms of the agreement, Epistem has issued to the GHIF a five-year convertible bond totaling $8.0 million (GBP4.7 million) (the Bond). As part of the collaborative funding agreement, the GHIF and Epistem have made global access commitments to mutually support and facilitate the introduction, distribution and sale of the Genedrive® platform and the expanding menu of infectious disease assays under development for low-and middle-income countries.

The GHIF is an investment fund designed to provide financing to commercialise new and improved tools to fight challenges such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/Aids and maternal and infant mortality in the world's poorest countries. The GHIF was capitalized by individual investors, private foundations, institutional investors, three leading pharmaceutical companies, a multilateral development bank and the Governments of Canada and Germany, with the benefit of a partial guarantee from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. LHGP Asset Management, the London-based asset management arm of Lion's Head Global Partners, authorised by the FCA, serves as the Investment Manager for the GHIF. The Bond represents the GHIF's inaugural investment.

The proceeds of the Bond will be applied to the further development, production and commercialization of Genedrive® devices and an expanded menu of tests for the diagnosis of infectious diseases which cause significant morbidity and mortality in the developing world.

Under the collaborative funding agreement, Epistem has agreed to make its Genedrive® platform available for sale in developing countries under a pricing framework that reflects the needs of poor patients in low- and middle-income countries. The GHIF will seek to leverage its network to support Epistem in the final stages of clinical testing and regulatory approval, and the subsequent roll-out of Genedrive® and its infectious disease assays globally. The Genedrive® platform has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of those most at risk of diseases such as tuberculosis, which require sophisticated diagnostic techniques to identify the presence of the disease and prescribe the proper course of treatment. Current "gold standard" techniques are labour-intensive, time-consuming and require the shipping of biological samples to central laboratories for testing. The potential for Genedrive® to offer affordable, specific and rapid diagnosis of diseases like tuberculosis at or near the point-of-care would introduce significant public health benefits globally, which drove the GHIF's interest in collaborating with Epistem on this product.