Pluristem Takes Possession Of And Moving Into New State-of-the-Art Manufacturing Facility

HAIFA, Israel, Jan. 30, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pluristem Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq:PSTI) (TASE:PLTR), a leading developer of placenta-based cell therapies, announced today that the company has taken possession of and is moving into its new state-of-the-art GMP facility. The facility allows for the production of mass quantities of PLacental eXpanded (PLX) cells that possess the advantages of being grown utilizing Pluristem's patented 3D bioreactor technology.

The new manufacturing facility will have the capability to produce different PLX product candidates with the potential capacity of over 150,000 doses annually. Additionally, if more indications are approved by regulators for clinical trials, this new facility will enable us to supply PLX cells to conduct these additional trials in parallel.

Zami Aberman, Chairman and CEO of Pluristem commented, "We are excited to begin work in our new plant. With this new manufacturing facility, our company is capable of combining the ideal characteristics of a supply source in the placenta with a proprietary expansion technology that successfully addresses the issues of reproducibility and cost to provide high numbers of reproducible batches of the highest quality PLX cells. Our new facility allows increasing the yield from one placenta to over ten times the yield from our previous pilot facility, and puts us in a very strong competitive position compared to traditional two-dimensional expansion technologies."

"Pluristem is developing PLX cell therapies that have shown safety and potential efficacy for a range of indications in our pre-clinical and clinical studies, and now we also have the technology and capabilities to make these treatments, if fully developed and approved by the regulators, available on a large-scale," Aberman added.

About Pluristem Therapeutics

Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq:PSTI) (TASE:PLTR) is a leading developer of placenta-based cell therapies. The Company's patented PLX (PLacental eXpanded) cells are a drug delivery platform that releases a cocktail of therapeutic proteins in response to a host of local and systemic inflammatory and ischemic diseases. PLX cells are grown using the company's proprietary 3D micro-environmental technology and are an "off-the-shelf" product that requires no tissue matching prior to administration. Pluristem is focusing on the development of PLX cells administered locally to potentially treat systemic diseases and potentially obviating the need to use the intravenous route.

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