Thursday November 01 2001, 3:45 PM Eastern Time

Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Presents New Findings on HAAH Oncology Program At AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference

Presentations Further Demonstrate Importance of Technology for Both the Treatment and Diagnosis of Multiple Cancers

ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today presented new findings on its HAAH Oncology Program at the International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Miami Beach, Florida. The conference is a joint collaboration of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). More than two thousand clinical investigators and laboratory scientists who are experts in the latest advances in cancer therapy attend this annual interdisciplinary conference.

The Company's Oncology Program targets the enzyme Human Aspartyl (Asparaginyl) beta-Hydroxylase, or HAAH. HAAH over-expression has been detected in primary tumor tissue of all eighteen tumor types tested to date, including cancers of the pancreas, breast, ovary, liver, colon, prostate, lung, brain, and bile duct. HAAH over-expression has been detected in 99% of tumor specimens (n>350) tested to date and has not been detected in normal or adjacent non-affected tissue. Recent findings have demonstrated that over- expression of HAAH is sufficient to induce cellular transformation, to increase cell motility and invasiveness, and to establish tumor formation in vivo.

The first paper, entitled "Inhibition of Cancer Cell Proliferation, Motility, and Invasiveness by Monoclonal Antibodies Specific for Human Aspartyl (Asparaginyl) beta-Hydroxylase (HAAH)," described the use of two monoclonal antibodies against HAAH to inhibit cancer cell proliferation, motility, and invasiveness in lung, hepatocellular, and breast carcinoma cell lines. The Company's drug candidates inhibited tumor cell growth in a dose- dependent fashion. Control cell lines did not express HAAH and were not affected. The results demonstrate the potential for the application of HAAH targeted monoclonal antibodies in tumor therapy.

The second paper, entitled "Development of Cancer Immunodiagnostics Using Human Aspartyl (Asparaginyl) beta-Hydroxylase (HAAH) as a Biomarker," investigated the use of HAAH as a biomarker to develop immunodiagnostics for cancer. The study used two monoclonal antibodies to detect HAAH by immunohistochemical staining in pancreatic carcinoma specimens. HAAH was readily detected by both antibodies and only in tissue histopathologically identified as cancerous (n=18). Adjacent unaffected areas of tissue specimens were not stained. Epitopes for the two antibodies are in the extracellular domain of HAAH and are non-overlapping and distal to one another. The results demonstrate the potential for these antibodies to be used in combination to develop sandwich immunoassays to measure HAAH in various body fluids to provide useful diagnostic and prognostic tools for cancer patient management.

Background on HAAH Oncology Program

The Company has a License Agreement and Collaborative Research Agreement with Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University for HAAH. These agreements give the Company exclusive worldwide rights for the therapeutic and diagnostic use of HAAH and provide a seamless working collaboration between the groups that grants the Company exclusive rights to all future developments through the collaboration.

The Company also has a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to engineer all-human, single-chain, ultra-high affinity antibodies directed to HAAH for use in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer.

Additional aspects of the expression, measurement, and biological effect of HAAH that the Company believes make it a suitable target for cancer therapy and diagnosis include:

* HAAH is over-expressed on the surface of cancer cells, facilitating detection, drug delivery, and enzyme inhibition. * In laboratory studies, normal cells that are stimulated to express HAAH undergo malignant transformation and exhibit increased motility. * Even partial inhibition of HAAH expression has a beneficial effect on tumor cells, causing them to revert to a more normal phenotype. * In studies conducted in nude mice, all animals that received injections of cells expressing high levels of HAAH developed tumors at the injection site.

"HAAH's functional relevance for tumorigenesis, growth, and metastasis represent an important, novel, and newly validated target and biomarker for cancer therapy and diagnosis," stated Hossein A. Ghanbari, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Company. "We are moving forward quickly to develop our antibody drug PAN-355 for the treatment of a wide variety of tumor types and are exploring its utility to develop both in vitro and in vivo diagnostics."

About Panacea Pharmaceuticals

Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a development stage biopharmaceutical company focused on utilizing functional genomics and proteomics to develop therapeutics and diagnostics for cancer. The Company's technology pipeline includes drug development programs for central nervous system diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

More information is available at http://www.PanaceaPharma.com.

CONTACT: Kasra Ghanbari, Chief Operating Officer, of Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc., +1-240-453-6295, or fax, +1-240-465-0450, or Kasra@PanaceaPharma.com.