Unilever start samenwerking met BioLeap

Press release - 6 January 2011

UNILEVER ENTERS COLLABORATION WITH BIOLEAP

Open Innovation in Molecular Design

Unilever today announced that it has entered into a partnership with New Jersey-based BioLeap to apply their molecular-design technology to the development of innovative consumer products. Terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

The two-year initiative will bring together a worldwide team of Unilever and BioLeap scientists working on the core biology of ageing. The programme is targeting a range of benefit areas of interest to Unilever.

Unilever’s Chief R&D Officer, Genevieve Berger said, “Our R&D activities form the link between science and consumer needs, all the more so as consumers become increasingly health-conscious. This collaboration with BioLeap is another example of the commitment at Unilever to partner innovators from outside the business with specific biotech assets and knowledge with our own in-house science and development experts based in our six core laboratories across the world.

“I see the key benefits of this collaboration with BioLeap being the development of superior products across a number of categories and exclusivity that will potentially give us competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

As consumer demand for healthy living and ageing products increases, Unilever is strategically positioning itself to meet this need through combining its own considerable R&D resource with complimentary technical assets. BioLeap’s molecular-design technology will enable Unilever to build differentiated, healthenhancing products panning several categories.

Work on the project will begin immediately.

-Ends

Notes to Editors

About Unilever

Unilever works to create a better future every day. We help people feel good, look good and get more out of life with brands and services that are good for them and good for others.

Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving consumer goods with strong operations in more than 100 countries and sales in 170. Unilever products are present in more than half the households on the planet and are used over two billion times a day.

Our portfolio includes some of the world’s best known and most loved brands including eleven €1 billion brands, and global leadership in many categories in which we operate. The portfolio features iconic brands such as: Knorr, Hellmann’s, Lipton, Dove, Vaseline, Persil, Cif, Marmite and Pot Noodle. We have around 163,000 employees in approaching 100 countries, and generated annual sales of €40 billion in 2009. For more information about Unilever and its brands, please visit www.unilever.com.

Unilever is Food Industry Leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes for the 12th year running. We are in the FTSE4Good Index Series and attained a top environmental score of 5, leading to inclusion in the FTSE4Good Environmental Leaders Europe 40 Index. We are also ranked 7th in the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World, a list compiled by Corporate Knights Magazine. We achieved Platinum Plus standard in the UK’s Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index 2009, and were named Company of the Year in 2010.

Unilever R&D involves over 6,000 professionals, six strategic centres for global R&D and 31 major product development centres. The strategic centres are located in Trumbull, US, Port Sunlight and Colworth in the UK, Vlaardingen in The Netherlands, Bangalore in India and Shanghai in China. In 2009, our investment in R&D was €891m.

About BioLeap

BioLeap is advancing proprietary molecular design for product development. BioLeap’s computational, fragmentbased technology and molecular-design process promise greater speed, economy, and odds of success than traditional library screening. In pharmaceutical applications, this in silico design capability addresses one of the biggest problems in drug discovery: the limitation of drug-like and patentable leads for important but often difficult biological targets. BioLeap also designs molecules for the consumer-product and agriculture industries.

Publicly announced partners of BioLeap in drug discovery are GlaxoSmithKline and Lycera Corporation. Investors in BioLeap are Adams Capital Management, Inc. and Quaker BioVentures. For more information, visit BioLeap at bioleap.com.

For further media information contact:

Paul Matthews
Unilever Corporate Media Relations Manager
01372 945 925 / 0775 276 8888
paul.matthews@unilever.com

Trevor Gorin
Unilever Global Media Relations Director
0208 822 6010 / 07711 020 438
trevor.gorin@unilever.com

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