OXFORD, September 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Agreement to Drive the Development of OGeS' own Pipeline of 
Antibodies in Cancer

Oxford Genome Sciences (UK) Ltd (OGeS) today announced a second
partnering agreement with Medarex, Inc. This new agreement provides OGeS with
broad access to Medarex's fully human antibody technology and will
potentially enable OGeS to accelerate the development of its own pipeline of
novel fully human antibodies in the field of cancer.

Under the terms of the agreement, OGeS will license Medarex's proprietary
transgenic mouse technology to generate antibody therapeutics against cancer
targets that OGeS identifies using its unique OGAP(R) database. OGeS will
retain full worldwide rights to the new human antibodies generated, and
Medarex has the right to receive license fees, milestone payments and
royalties on commercial sales of any products that may result from this
agreement. Further financial details were not disclosed.

Medarex's technology offers the potential for drug developers to generate
high affinity fully human antibodies. OGeS will be able to potentially build
a valuable and broad therapeutic antibodies pipeline by combining Medarex's
technology with its OGAP database, which enables the identification of best
in class targets,

In parallel, to further accelerate its pipeline development, OGeS has
established a three-way agreement with Biosite Incorporated (Biosite) and
Medarex. Medarex will provide access to its transgenic technology to Biosite,
and Biosite will carry out the early stage antibody generation on behalf of
OGeS for a potentially large number of OGeS' antibody programs. This is
partly in exchange for Biosite receiving access to the OGeS diagnostic
targets in colorectal and ovarian cancer. This arrangement is expected to
improve OGeS' productivity to put top quality antibody therapeutic programs
into development more quickly.

In addition, under a separate agreement between OGeS and Biosite, Biosite
can also establish a companion diagnostic assay on certain programs selected
by Biosite and OGeS. This provides OGeS with the opportunity to create a
significant portfolio of personalised cancer therapeutics with companion
diagnostics for many of its oncology targets.

Dr. Christian Rohlff, CEO of OGeS said: "Today's announcement is an
important step in OGeS' transition from target discovery to product
development potentially allowing us establish our own pipeline of antibodies
in cancer based on the leading expertise of world leading antibody companies.
Not only does it highlight OGeS' ability to leverage our existing
partnerships with both Medarex and Biosite but also reinforces our strategy
to fully exploit the commercial opportunity of our unique ability to discover
new valuable targets based on our OGAP(R) database. We are now well
positioned to develop our own antibody therapeutics with companion
diagnostics in a very efficient and productive way, thereby establishing
ourselves as a major player in the field of personalised antibody medicines."

This new agreement builds upon a collaboration between OGeS and Medarex,
which was initiated in May 2006, for the discovery, development and
commercialization of antibody therapeutics on a 50:50 basis. This initial
joint collaboration has already led to a number of promising discovery
programs which are now at various stages of preclinical research.

About Oxford Genome Sciences

Oxford Genome Sciences (OGeS) is focused on the development of
targeted medicines for oncology. The company uses OGAP(R), which it has
developed into the world's largest cancer protein database, to discover novel
clinically relevant drug targets and diagnostics.

OGeS' strategy is to use its unique and integrated OGAP(R)
discovery platform in alliances with the world's leading antibody companies
to develop OGeS targets into new antibody therapeutics and diagnostics that
will deliver innovative and cost-effective medicines to fulfil unmet patient
needs in the field of cancer. The company has signed a number of
collaborations in the area of cancer, which are together designed to achieve
OGeS' objective of developing novel personalised solutions to the management
of cancer. Specifically in 2006, OGeS entered into partnerships with Medarex
to discover, develop and commercialise new human antibody therapeutics for
the treatment of cancers and with Biosite to develop a new diagnostic protein
panel for relapsing colorectal cancer. In parallel, OGeS provides biomarker
discovery and screening services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology
companies.

OGeS, a privately held company, was formed in 2004 and is based near
Oxford, UK.

About OGAP(R)

Oxford Genome Anatomy Project (OGAP) holds the world's largest
proprietary collection of proteins represented by the database, which
contains over one million peptide sequences from 50 tissues and 60 disease
states, mapped to approximately 15,000 genes and over eight million SNPs and
haplotypes. The database can be customised for individual partners to support
and enhance their preclinical and clinical drug development activities.

OGAP(R) is a registered trade mark of Oxford Genome Sciences (UK) Ltd.

For further information, please see http://www.oxfordgenomesciences.com

For further information, please contact:
    Oxford Genome Sciences
    Dr Christian Rohlff, Chief Executive Officer
    Tel: +44-(0)1235-861770
    christian.rohlff@oxfordgenomesciences.com
    
    Citigate Dewe Rogerson
    David Dible, Valerie Auffray
    Tel: +44-(0)207-638-9571
    valerie.auffray@citigatedr.co.uk