ACLA Aclara Biosciences, (MM)

ACLARA BioSciences Appoints Roy S. Herbst, M.D., Ph.D., To Scientific Advisory Board Prominent Oncologist Underscores Company's Leadership in Protein-Based Diagnostics MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ACLARA BioSciences (NASDAQ:ACLA) announced that Roy S. Herbst, M.D., Ph.D., has joined its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Herbst is Chief of the Section of Thoracic Oncology and Associate Professor at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Serving as a physician-scientist in the M.D. Anderson's Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology since 1997, Dr. Herbst is considered a leading researcher in the field of novel antiangiogenic/antimetastatic translational drug development with primary research areas of interest including the biology and treatment of lung and head and neck cancer, prognostic markers in lung cancer, preclinical development of antiangiogenesis agents and phase I/II trials of new agents in lung and other solid tumors. "I am particularly pleased to be joining ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board, at a time when the Company is making great strides with its novel protein-based approach," said Dr. Herbst. "This technology is exciting because it provides researchers with a dynamic understanding of a tumor's complex pathway biology in individual patients which is essential in developing targeted therapies for the treatment of cancer." Dr. Herbst has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers, which have had a significant impact on the understanding of and the approach to the diagnosis and treatment of lung and head and neck cancers. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the 1999 MD Anderson Physician Scientist Award, the 1999 American Society of Clinical Oncology Career Development Award, and the 1997 American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award. He also is highly regarded as an educator. Dr. Herbst received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees with majors in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, New Haven, Conn., a Ph.D. in molecular cell biology from The Rockefeller University in New York City, and an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in New York City. He received his internship training and served his postdoctoral hematology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, going on to serve as a Medical Oncology Fellow at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, in Boston. Dr. Herbst received an additional Master of Science degree from Harvard Medical School through the MIT-Harvard HST Program. According to ACLARA Chief Executive Officer Thomas Klopack, "We are very excited to have such a renowned physician, who is so involved with cancer and targeted therapies research join our advisory board. We anticipate that Dr. Herbst's unique experience will help to further define the potential for our eTag System in determining which patient populations or sub- populations are likely to respond to specific targeted treatments." Klopack continues, "We look forward to Dr. Herbst's input and advice as we move forward and commercialize our system." Dr. Herbst's appointment comes a few weeks after the appointment of Jose Baselga, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, who has worked with Dr. Herbst to study the effectiveness of targeted therapies including Iressa. Commenting on the expansion of ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board, Klopack adds, "The high caliber of these appointments is indicative of the progress we've made in our efforts to provide physicians and researchers the tools they need to make personalized medicine truly targeted. These provide us with strategic insight and experience to continue building our Scientific Advisory Board, which now has seven renowned physicians and researchers." The seven leading physicians and researchers on ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board have interests ranging from basic research to clinical diagnosis and treatment of a range of different cancers and immune system disorders. In addition to Dr. Herbst and Dr. Baselga, they include David B. Agus, M.D., Research Director at the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCLA, Carlos L. Arteaga, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology and Director of the Breast Cancer Research Program of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, PJ Utz, M.D., Assistant Professor at the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at the Center for Clinical Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, John Weinstein, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology within the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research and Owen N. Witte, M.D., Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA. About the eTag System The ability of the eTag System to identify difficult-to-detect protein complexes in patient samples can provide unique insights to the likelihood of an individual patient to respond to specific therapies. In addition, since ACLARA's eTag System requires only small amounts of biological material, and have been shown to work in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections (the standard format in pathology laboratories), both retrospective and prospective analysis of clinical samples can be performed. To further validate its eTag System, ACLARA is correlating its test results with patient response data and outcome information to demonstrate the assays' predictive power. Currently, ACLARA is conducting studies with several clinical collaborators based on the retrospective study of tissue samples from patients participating in clinical trials for new drugs as well as from those being treated with approved therapies. About ACLARA Founded in 1995, ACLARA is a biotechnology company working to provide physicians and researchers products and services to make personalized medicine a reality through its protein-based assay technology -- the eTag(TM) System. ACLARA is dedicated to unlocking the power of pathway biology to accelerate the development of next-generation targeted therapeutics, recognizing the most appropriate patients for approved therapies and identifying the highly-specific, protein-based biomarkers that will enable physicians to create truly personalized treatment regimens for patients suffering from cancer and other life-threatening disorders. ACLARA is commercializing its proprietary eTag System to enhance and accelerate drug discovery research and the preclinical and clinical development of targeted therapeutics. ACLARA's technology may also enable the development of highly-specific, protein-based diagnostics capable of providing physicians with a powerful tool for creating personalized treatment regimens for patients suffering from serious and difficult-to-treat cancers. For more information on ACLARA please visit the Company's web site at http://www.aclara.com/. Forward-Looking Statements All statements in this news release that are not historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to factors that could cause actual results to differ materially for ACLARA from those projected. Those factors include risks and uncertainties relating to the performance of our products, anticipated progress in commercialization of our eTag(TM) assay system; the potential for use of our eTag assays in clinical development programs; the potential for use of our eTag assays as diagnostic tests; our ability to successfully conduct clinical studies and the results obtained from those studies; our ability to establish reliable, high-volume operations at commercially reasonable costs; expected reliance on a few customers for the majority of our revenues; actual market acceptance of our products and adoption of our technological approach and products by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; our estimate of the size of our markets; our estimates of the levels of demand for our products; our ability to develop organizational capabilities suitable for the further development and commercialization of our eTag assays; the ultimate validity and enforceability of our patent applications and patents; the possible infringement of the intellectual property of others; technological approaches of ACLARA and our competitors; our pending merger with ViroLogic, Inc., including the risk that the closing conditions or the merger may not be satisfied and the merger may not be completed, and costs related to the proposed merger; and other risk factors identified in our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2004 and the Joint Proxy/Prospectus related to the proposed merger with ViroLogic as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trademarks ACLARA BioSciences is a registered trademark, and eTag and the ACLARA logo are trademarks of ACLARA BioSciences, Inc. DATASOURCE: ACLARA BioSciences, Inc. CONTACT: investors, Alfred Merriweather, VP, Finance and CFO of ACLARA, +1-650-210-1200, or ; or media, Jennifer Viera of Schwartz Communications, +1-781-684-0770, or , for ACLARA Web site: http://www.aclara.com/

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