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MRCT London, UK, 16th February 2010 ‐ Executives from Medical Research Council Technology (MRCT) (London, UK) and O2h (Cambridge, UK) announced today an agreement under which O2h will provide multi‐FTE ‐synthetic chemistry services to the drug discovery programmes at MRCT.

MRCT translates cutting edge scientific discoveries into commercial products, two of which (Tysabri and Actemra) are already on the market. The MRCT Centre for Therapeutics Discovery works closely with the MRCT Intellectual Property and Business Development Division and is rigorous in the selection of well‐defined and characterised targets, and considers novelty, validation and ‘druggability’. In addition, the group works on targets where there is a clear strategy for progression and development.

Dr Justin Bryans, Director of Drug Discovery at MRCT’s Centre for Therapeutics Discovery said “India has rapidly become one of the foremost providers of high quality chemistry support for the drug discovery sector, and we are delighted to expand our portfolio of collaborators with this new initiative with O2h. We believe this partnership will significantly improve the translation of basic research towards clinical benefit”.

Sunil Shah, CEO, O2h “Our scientific team has a proven track record in discovery services and we are proud to be leveraging our capability as we begin this collaboration with one of the premier drug discovery research groups in the UK.”

Information for Editors

About Oxygen Healthcare Ltd
O2h is a 5 year old discovery services company co‐located in Cambridge, UK and Ahmedabad, India. The Indian operations provide a high level of chemistry expertise while UK office provides project management support. Current clients of O2h include several top 20 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the US, Europe and Japan. O2h adheres to the highest standards of performance with a particular emphasis on rapid interactive communications and delivery speed. Services provided by O2h include FTE‐based synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, full services lab‐units and ADME. Further information on O2h can be found at www.o2h.com.

Contact information: Dr. Ekta Ahuja info@o2h.com OXYGEN HEALTHCARE LTD 23 Cambridge Science Park CB4 0EY

About Medical Research Council Technology (MRCT)
MRCT is the exclusive commercialisation agent for the UK Medical Research Council, working to translate cutting edge scientific discoveries into commercial products. MRCT bridges the gap between innovative basic science and making medicine. MRCT works to provide drug‐like candidate molecules to innovative new drug targets, and to translate innovative antibody‐based drug targets into potent and selective therapeutic antibody candidates giving pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies new starting points for drug discovery and development, based on MRC advances in science. MRCT’s Therapeutic Antibody Group scientists have a proven track record of success in antibody humanization which extends over 20 years and has produced 10 clinical candidates and two regulatory approved humanized antibodies: Elan/Biogen Idec’s Tysabri® and Chugai/Roche’s Actemra®. www.mrctechnology.org

Contact Information:

Suzy Hargreaves

E-mail:   shargreaves@tech.mrc.ac.uk

Phone:   +44 (0)20 7391 2798