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OXFORD BIOMEDICA

Oxford Biomedica Commences Clinical Trial of TroVax™

Oxford, UK -2 January 2001: Oxford BioMedica ("BioMedica") announced today that the Medicines Control Agency (the 'MCA'), the division of the National Health Service which regulates the safety, quality and efficacy of all medicines in the UK market, has approved BioMedica's cancer vaccine, TroVaxT for a Phase I/II clinical trial in patients with colorectal cancer.

TroVaxT is a gene-based therapeutic vaccine that is designed to stimulate the patient's immune system to mount a powerful anti-cancer response. The immune system plays a key role in fighting infections and disease. However with cancer, the patient's immune system often fails to react to the existence of a tumour and as a result an immune response is not triggered. TroVax™ is designed to stimulate a patient's immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells in this situation.

The product is based on a gene that encodes a protein that exists only on the surface of tumour cells and not on normal cells - such proteins are known as Tumour Associated Antigens (TAAs). When this gene is expressed by Oxford BioMedica's highly engineered virus-based delivery system, it induces a potent anti-tumour response. This means that cells and antibodies of the immune system seek out tumour cells carrying the TAA and destroy them. In preclinical model systems the results have been very striking, with TroVaxT breaking immune tolerance to tumours and protecting against further tumour growth. TroVaxT will be trialled on patients with late stage colorectal cancer, at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, one of the UK's leading cancer centres.

BioMedica is already in Phase I/II clinical trials with MetXiaŽ, its first anti-cancer gene therapy product. During 2000, the Company also completed two collaborative agreements based on TroVaxT and its related technology. In the first collaboration, a veterinary version of TroVaxT was licensed to the major European veterinary company, Virbac SA for development to treat cancer in 'companion' animals e.g. dogs. The second agreement was with Nycomed Amersham to develop a tumour imaging agent based on a proprietary antibody to the TAA targeted by TroVaxT.

Commenting on the announcement, Professor Alan Kingsman, Chief Executive of Oxford BioMedica, said:
"This is a very significant development. Already TroVaxT and its related technology have attracted substantial commercial interest and are the subject of 2 important collaborations. The strength of our preclinical results together with the potentially broad applicability of TroVaxT to treat a wide range of cancers make this a leading product in BioMedica's portfolio, either for use on its own as a cancer vaccine or in conjunction with other treatments. However, we should recognise that our successes to date have been in model systems for cancer and while these results were the best we could have hoped for, the evaluation of TroVaxT in clinical trials will be key to determining the future for this product."

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Notes to Editors

1. Oxford BioMedica plc
   Established in 1995, the Company specialises in the development and application of gene-based therapeutics and immunotherapeutics for the treatment of disease in the areas of Oncology, Neurobiology and Viral Infection and in Gene Discovery. Oxford BioMedica plc was floated on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange in December 1996.
   
   Currently Oxford BioMedica has corporate collaborations with Aventis, AstraZeneca, IDM, Modex Therapeutics, Nycomed Amersham, Valentis and Virbac. BioMedica's first clinical product, MetXiaŽ is in Phase I/II clinical trials for late-stage breast cancer (BC1) and ovarian cancer (OC1). TroVaxT is the Company's second product in clinical trials.

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