ACLA Aclara Biosciences, (MM)

Manuel Hidalgo, M.D., Ph.D., Joins ACLARA BioSciences Scientific Advisory Board Another Distinguished Oncologist Highlights Company's Advancements in Protein-Based Diagnostics MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ACLARA BioSciences (NASDAQ:ACLA) announced that Manuel Hidalgo, M.D., Ph.D., has joined its Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Hidalgo is an Associate Professor of Oncology and Co-Director of the Drug Development Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Hidalgo is considered a leading researcher in the development of targeted therapies for the treatment of cancer in patients with solid tumors. His research focuses on optimizing the clinical development of novel treatments by measuring target receptor and molecular anomalies, as well as analyzing the biological activity in tumor and normal tissues of patients treated with specific therapies. Dr. Hidalgo is the Principal Investigator in four new clinical studies started within the last year at the Drug Development Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "I'm excited to join ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board as their technology and approach offers a unique advantage in its ability to identify and measure proteins with a high degree of sensitivity from solid tissue samples." He continues, "While genomic approaches provide insight, it is proteins and the interaction between proteins that characterize particular types of cancer. By providing a sensitive and robust way to quantify the relationship between a specific tumor and protein interactions, ACLARA's technology is uniquely suited to become a clinical test for physicians to deliver truly personalized medicine to their patients." Dr. Hidalgo received his M.D. from the University Navarra Medical School in Pamplona, Spain, and his Ph.D. in Infectious Diseases in Cancer from the University of Autonoma in Madrid, Spain. In 1997, he began his career as a clinical research fellow at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he participated in the EORTC/NCI Exchange Fellowship and AACR Young Investigator Fellowship in Clinical Research. He worked as both an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center and as a clinical investigator at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center. In addition to publishing several peer-reviewed scientific papers, Dr. Hidalgo has received numerous honors for his work, including the 2001 American Society of Clinical Oncology Career Development Award According to ACLARA Chief Executive Officer Thomas Klopack, "We are very excited to have another leading physician, who is so involved with oncology and targeted therapies research, join our advisory board. We anticipate that Dr. Hidalgo's input and expertise will help ACLARA establish the eTag System as a robust clinical test that allows physicians to understand which targeted treatment, or combination of treatments, will be most effective in combating their patient's cancer." ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board now comprises eight world-renowned physicians and researchers. In addition to Dr. Hidalgo 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, Jose Baselga, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and the Scientific Chairman of the Spanish Breast Cancer cooperative group SOLTI, Roy Herbst, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of the Section of Thoracic Oncology and Associate Professor at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, 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 June 30, 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 BioSciences, Inc., +1-650-210-1200, or ; or media, Jennifer Viera of Schwartz Communications, +1-781-684-0770, or , for ACLARA BioSciences, Inc. Web site: http://www.aclara.com/

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