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Acambis and Arrow to work together on novel vaccines

02:00 EDT Monday, June 09, 2003

TORONTO, June 9 /CNW/ - Arrow Therapeutics, the London based anti- infectives drug discovery group, is to work with Acambis plc of Cambridge, UK on novel vaccine discovery.

The collaboration aims to discover attenuated or sub-unit vaccines and will initially involve an evaluation by Acambis of Arrow's proprietary target discovery technology, Transposon Mediated Differential Hybridisation (TMDH).

The agreement includes an upfront payment, milestones and royalties, and covers the development of a novel vaccine for a single pathogen, leaving Arrow free to work on other pathogens with different partners.

TMDH, which was granted a patent at the end of last year, will be used to identify attenuating genes and surface proteins for a potential vaccine candidate against a pathogen selected by Acambis.

Live attenuated vaccines are developed by mutating or deleting genes to weaken bacteria in order to prevent them causing disease whilst still being able to raise a protective immune response. Often multiple genes need to be modified to create an effective vaccine and the identification of appropriate combinations is difficult using current methods. Arrow's technology is sensitive enough to reveal all attenuating genes and levels of attenuation in an organism in just one experiment, enabling rational design of a novel vaccine faster than any other approach. TMDH is also able to identify targets on a cell's surface that could be used to produce sub unit vaccines.

Thomas Monath, Chief Scientific Officer of Acambis, commented: "Arrow's technology represents an extremely powerful approach to the development of new vaccines against some major bacterial infections. The technology fits well with Acambis' strategy to meet major unmet medical needs and commercial opportunities with live, attenuated vaccine products."

Ken Powell, Arrow's CEO, said: "The deal with Acambis validates the extensive work that has gone into Arrow's antibacterial target discovery efforts. Although TMDH was developed to discover targets for our novel drug discovery pipeline we believe that it will be equally as effective in vaccine discovery and we are delighted that Acambis has chosen to work with us."

Arrow has also recently attracted a research grant for TMDH worth more than pnds stlg 1 million from the BBSRC/DTI for anti-infective target research in collaboration with the Universities of Newcastle, Cambridge and Oxford.

Notes to Editors:

Arrow Therapeutics is a small pharmaceutical company strictly focused on novel anti-infective discovery. Based in central London with 86 employees the company is four years old and already has a strong pipeline of novel antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal lead and pre-clinical compounds. Arrow's approach has been to combine its proprietary target discovery efforts with high calibre drug discovery, all of which is carried out in house allowing for full and effective integration between scientific disciplines; one of the company's distinguishing features.

Compounds will be licensed at stages between pre-clinical and Phase IIb depending on the therapeutic area, the later more expensive stages will be handled by partners. Seed funding of pnds stlg 1.5 million was provided by Unibio of London who also invested in the first major funding round completed in July 2000 along with GIMV Belgium (lead), Alta Partners USA, 3i Group London, TVM Munich, and NVM Edinburgh which brought in pnds stlg 11.1 million. The same group provided a further pnds stlg 7 million in January 2002. The current financing round is in the final legal stage.

www.arrowt.co.uk

Acambis is a leading developer of vaccines to prevent and treat infectious diseases. Recognised internationally as the leading producer of smallpox vaccines, Acambis provides governments around the world with the full portfolio of related smallpox vaccine products required to protect their citizens against the threat of smallpox virus being used as a bioterrorist weapon. Acambis is establishing a travel vaccines franchise, including vaccines against yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, dengue fever and typhoid. Acambis also has the most advanced vaccine in development targeting the West Nile virus, which has spread to over 40 US States in the last three years.

Acambis is based in Cambridge, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. Its primary listing is on the London Stock Exchange (ACM) and its shares are listed in the form of American Depositary Receipts on Nasdaq (ACAM).

More information is available at www.acambis.com.

For further information: Arrow contacts - Ken Powell: CEO, +44 (0)207 015 1002 or Margaret Walsh: Head of Business Development, +44 (0)207 015 1003; Acambis contact - Lyndsay Wright: Director of Communications, +44 (0)1223 275300

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