Precision Antibody Wins Contract to Develop 'Gold Standard' Antibodies as Part of National Cancer Institute's Clinical Proteomics Technologies for Cancer (CPTC) Initiative

Precision Antibody Wins Contract to Develop 'Gold Standard' Antibodies as Part
of National Cancer Institute's Clinical Proteomics Technologies for Cancer
(CPTC) Initiative
- Third contract awarded in NCI initiative to improve monoclonal antibody
reagents for proteomics research --

COLUMBIA, Md., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Precision Antibody(TM) has been
selected as the antibody developer for a component of the National Cancer
Institute (NCI)'s Clinical Proteomic Technologies for Cancer (CPTC), which is
focused on improving the number and standardizing the quality of monoclonal
antibody reagents available for clinical cancer proteomics research. The
contract award is the result of a third solicitation for contract proposals
from custom antibody suppliers as part of the Clinical Proteomic Reagents
Resources component of the CPTC, whose mission is to develop high-quality,
standardized, renewable reagents that are needed for effective proteomic
analysis.

The contract is awarded to private companies through a competitive bidding
process managed by Science Applications International Corporation-Frederick
(SAIC-F), a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC that operates the National Cancer
Institute's leading center for cancer and AIDS research in Frederick,
Maryland.

NCI's CPTC is a five-year, $104 million initiative to develop new proteomics
tools and technologies that will accelerate discovery and clinical research in
cancer. The antibody initiative of the CPTC's Clinical Proteomic Reagents
Resource project was launched in late 2007 to address a major obstacle
hindering the progress of proteomics research: The relatively small number of
antibodies generated against proteins of interest, and their generally
variable quality. The goal of the antibody initiative is to develop a
standardized resource of very high-quality reference antibodies generated
against cancer-related proteins of interest that will be made available to
proteomics researchers, along with characterization data and other information
intended to support replication and standardization.

"We are very pleased that SAIC-Frederick has selected Precision Antibody to
contribute to this important initiative," said Jun Hayashi, Ph.D., Vice
President of Precision Antibody. "Our goal is to rapidly develop and optimize
antibodies for the target cancer-related antigens we have been assigned, which
will help accelerate the NCI's creation of a public resource of gold-standard
antibodies to advance proteomics research."

The terms of the contract call for Precision Antibody to apply its proprietary
rapid antibody-generation technology to develop three monoclonal antibodies
against each of 20 cancer-related target antigens produced by Argonne National
Laboratory that have been identified to be of high interest to the cancer
proteomics community. Other terms were not disclosed.

Following screening and initial characterization by Precision Antibody, SAIC-F
will undertake screening and additional characterization of the antibodies.
Techniques used in the rigorous characterization process may include ELISA and
indirect ELISA, Western blot, antibody isotype, SDS-PAGE, surface plasma
resonance, immunohistochemistry, immunoprecipitation, immunofluorescence, and
immuno-mass spectrometry. Final characterization will be completed by the
Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University and by the Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, which runs the Human Protein Atlas, a
comprehensive database that provides protein expression profiles for a large
number of human proteins.

Once characterized and produced, NCI's final renewable, highly characterized,
high-affinity antibodies and their producing hybridoma cells will be made
commercially available to the research community through the Developmental
Studies Hybridoma Bank at the University of Iowa. To ensure that experiments
can be both repeated and compared among researchers, detailed standard
operating procedures will also be provided, along with characterization data
that will be available to the scientific community via a web portal
(http://antibodies.cancer.gov)

About the Contract
This project is 100% supported with federal funds provided by the National
Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No.
HHSN261200800001E. The content of this press release does not necessarily
reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or
organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. government.

About Precision Antibody (www.precisionantibody.com)
Precision Antibody(TM) provides customized, high-affinity monoclonal and
polyclonal antibodies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as
to academic, government, and nonprofit research institutes for use in
discovery, research, and testing of novel pharmaceuticals, biomarkers, and
diagnostic tests. The company's products and services are based on a
proprietary antibody discovery and development platform technology that
enables rapid development and production of monoclonal antibodies from pilot
to large scale. The company's comprehensive monoclonal antibody service
offerings include antibody characterization, Biacore analysis, mammalian cell
banking, and commercial-scale manufacturing consultation. Precision Antibody
is a wholly owned service division of A&G Pharmaceutical, Inc.
(www.agpharma.com) and is based in Columbia, MD.

Contact:
Michael Keefe
(410) 884-4100 x11
mkeefe@precisionantibody.com

SOURCE Precision Antibody

Michael Keefe of Precision Antibody, +1-410-884-4100 x11,
mkeefe@precisionantibody.com