RNS No 653t
CAMBRIDGE ANTIBODY TECHNOLOGY
1 June 1999


For Further Information Contact:
Cambridge Antibody Technology
David Chiswell, Chief Executive Officer             Tel: +44 (0) 1763 263233
John Aston, Finance Director

HCC.De Facto
City/Financial, Sue Charles                         Tel: +44 (0) 171 496 3300
Trade/Science, Nikul Odedra

                                                                              
                        CAMBRIDGE ANTIBODY TECHNOLOGY                         

            ISSUE OF FURTHER SHARES FOR ACQUISITION OF APTEIN INC             


Melbourn, UK  In July 1998, as previously announced, Cambridge Antibody
Technology ("CAT") acquired Aptein Inc., a US company.  Aptein's major asset
is granted US and European patents in the field of polysome display.  The
total purchase consideration was up to $11 million.  $6 million of the
consideration was satisfied by the issue of CAT shares in July 1998, with the
balance of up to $5 million in CAT shares to be satisfied after Aptein had
received grants of European patents for its key technology and these patents
had been sustained through opposition or appeal.

A European patent was granted to Aptein in July 1998, and the related period
of opposition ended in April 1999.  The European Patent Office has now issued
formal confirmation that there has been no opposition made to the grant of
this patent.

Accordingly CAT is issuing a further 1,075,245 CAT ordinary shares to Aptein
shareholders in settlement of the balance of the consideration.  Application
has been made to the London Stock Exchange for these shares to be admitted to
the Official List.


Notes to Editors

Cambridge Antibody Technology:
CAT is a UK biotechnology company using its proprietary technologies in fully
human monoclonal antibodies for drug discovery and drug development.  Based in
Melbourn, 10 miles south of Cambridge, England, CAT currently employs around
150 people.  In March 1997, CAT completed its initial public offering and
listing on the London Stock Exchange, raising approximately #41 million.

CAT has a world-leading platform technology for rapidly isolating fully human
monoclonal antibodies using phage display systems.  CAT has an extensive phage
display antibody library, currently incorporating around 100 billion distinct
antibodies. This library forms the basis for the company's strategy to develop
a portfolio of clinical development programmes and for discovering new drug
leads using functional genomics.  The first two antibody products it developed
started clinical trials in 1997, in inflammation and fibrosis.

CAT has a number of license and collaborative agreements in place with
pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including: Eli Lilly, Pfizer, BASF
Pharma, Genentech, ICOS Corporation, Genetics Institute/BASF Pharma and
Wyeth-Ayerst.

Aptein:
Aptein's technology can be viewed as analogous to CAT's phage display
technology.  The key difference is that rather than displaying large libraries
of antibodies on a simple virus (the phage) the libraries of antibodies are
displayed on a component of the cell known as a  ribosome.  The complex of
ribosome, mRNA and newly made protein is referred to as a polysome.  The
polysome is responsible for protein synthesis in the cell.  As with phage
display, selection techniques allow the isolation, from these libraries, of
single molecules, which bind drug targets of interest, or, by using
antibodies, the isolation of the targets themselves.


END

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