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03 March, 2005

Proacta awarded NZ$3.45m grant funding for development pipeline

SAN DIEGO, March 3, 2005 – Proacta Inc, a US biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing treatments for cancer, has reported that its wholly-owned subsidiary in New Zealand has been awarded a total of $3.45 million by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) and TechNZ. The grants will allow Proacta to add an additional drug development candidate to its therapeutic pipeline.

NZTE granted Proacta $2.18 million over 3 years from the Australia New Zealand Biotechnology Partnership Fund (ANZBPF). This grant supports Proacta's ongoing operations in both New Zealand and Australia recognising the contribution of its Australian investor, GBS Ventures of Melbourne, Monash University and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Research Institute. Other Proacta investors include New Zealand's No8 Ventures and Endeavour i-Cap, as well as international pharmaceutical companies F. Hoffman-La Roche, Ltd and Genentech, Inc.

TechNZ granted Proacta $1.27 million over 17 months from the Technology for Business Growth (TBG) fund. This grant will provide the resources for Proacta to build technical expertise in various drug development activities in-house, to support further drug development of compounds in Proacta's extensive IP pipeline.

Dr Paul Cossum, Chief Executive Officer of Proacta Inc, said "We are delighted that the quality of Proacta's programmes has been recognised by the New Zealand government with these generous grants. Drug discovery and development are an expensive and risky business and these extra resources will help us reduce the risk by allowing us to develop two compounds in parallel. We look forward to commercialising a cancer treatment that was discovered in New Zealand".

Proacta is focused on the treatment of tumours which have a relatively large proportion of cells that have an abnormally low oxygen concentration, known as hypoxia. Such cells are resistant to conventional chemotherapy and radiation. Proacta's drugs are delivered as innocuous compounds that are selectively activated in low-oxygen cells of tumours. This can result in killing not only the low-oxygen cells but also the surrounding tumour cells which have more normal levels of oxygen.

Proacta is developing and protecting the company's intellectual property, hiring staff and taking new anticancer drugs into clinical trial in humans. It will undertake preclinical safety toxicology, manufacturing and formulation activities, in addition to phase I clinical trials in oncology.

The founding scientists, Professors Bill Denny and Bill Wilson at the Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, at The University of Auckland (ACSRC), and Professors Martin Brown and Amato Giacca at the Division of Radiation and Cancer Biology and the Department of Radiation Oncology at Stanford University, are world leading authorities in the field of tumour hypoxia.

Proacta draws on a broad portfolio of IP across 9 chemical families. Ongoing development of the portfolio is supported significant grant funding and led by acknowledged international experts in the field at Auckland and Stanford Universities. Proacta's strong IP and ongoing research activities in hypoxia-related cancer therapies give it a leadership position in meeting a substantial unmet need for the large and growing oncology market.