Thermogenesis Corp. announced today the receipt of an order for two BioArchive Systems which are to be placed by Beijing Rose, the Company's distributor in China, at the Zhejiang Provincial Blood Center in Hangzhou under the direction of Professor Lixing Yan.

These units will amount to the fifth and sixth BioArchive Systems chosen by a placental/cord blood (PCB) stem cell bank in China, joining Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Guangzhou.

According to Philip Coelho, Chairman and CEO of Thermogenesis Corp., "Recent research suggests that there are stem cells in a unit of cord blood that have the potential to produce other cells outside the hematopoietic system such as neural, liver and bone cells. This holds the promise of an ever growing demand for stem cell and regenerative medicine therapies which may be served by our growing base of installations.

"The BioArchive System plays a key role in the emerging world standards that are being adopted for the processing and validation of stem cell units. In Asia, it provides sterile cell processing disposables and a computer-driven robotic system to allow users to cryopreserve and archive up to 3,626 units of blood components in -196 degrees C liquid nitrogen. The BioArchive System can cryopreserve, archive and retrieve samples within liquid nitrogen without exposing the samples to detrimental transient warming events (TWE), which can reduce cell viability.

The BioArchive System is a Class II blood and blood component freezer exempt from the premarket notification procedures. The BioArchive System has potential applications involving archiving, storing, managing and retrieving other kinds of biological specimens, that may include stem cells, dendritic cells, T-cells, cell lines, sperm cells, eggs, heart valves, corneas, virus samples, biopsy samples and other blood, tissue and saliva samples. The BioArchive System is currently intended for storage of blood and blood components. Additional indications for use would require U.S. FDA clearance or approval.