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GlycoGenesys, Inc. Announces Appointment of Dr. Peter Seeberger of The Swiss Federal Institute to Its Scientific Advisory Board

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 January 2005, 09:00 CST

Renowned Carbohydrate Expert Joins GlycoGenesys Team

GlycoGenesys, Inc., (NASDAQ: GLGSD), a biotechnology company focused on carbohydrate-based drug development, announced today that Dr. Peter H. Seeberger, Professor, Laboratory For Organic Chemistry, The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland has joined the Company's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). In addition, Dr. Seeberger will act as a special consultant to the Company's chemistry group.

As a member of the SAB and consultant, he will advise management and the scientific team on state-of-the-art techniques in carbohydrate chemistry, advancing the commercialization efforts for its lead drug candidate, GCS-100LE. Dr. Seeberger's expertise in glycobiology will also:

-- help advance the development of the Company's GCS-100 drug discovery platform for oncology and other diseases; and

-- contribute to the expansion of the Company's global intellectual property portfolio around pectins and other carbohydrates that bind to cell surface glyco-proteins such as lectins.

President and CEO, Bradley J. Carver stated, "My colleagues and I are very pleased and excited that Peter has chosen to join the GlycoGenesys SAB and we will be working closely with him in the new year. Peter's award-winning accomplishments and initiatives in pioneering new tools and techniques for advancing carbohydrates as therapeutics and enhancing the benefits of existing therapeutics fit perfectly into our oncology product development strategy."

Dr. Seeberger, responded, "I am excited to advise GlycoGenesys' chemistry team and to collaborate with its distinguished SAB members on developing a potentially new class of cancer drugs. It is particularly stimulating for me that GCS-100LE is slated to enter Phase II clinical trials later in 2005. Contributing to the research on a "first-in-class" compound already in human clinical testing provides a unique opportunity for discovery." He continued, "Moreover, further study of GCS-100LE's structure and functional relationships as they relate to cancer and cellular function may result in the discovery of additional new chemical entities that have distinctly different characteristics and potential therapeutic applications."

About Dr. Peter H. Seeberger

Peter H. Seeberger received his B.S. in 1989 from the Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City he began his independent career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 1998, where he became the Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry. In April 2003, he moved to Switzerland, where he now works as a full professor at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. His research interests focus on the interface of chemistry and biology, in particular on the role of complex carbohydrates and glycoconjugates in information transfer in biological systems. His group has developed new methods for the automated solid-phase synthesis of complex carbohydrates and glycosaminoglycans that serve as molecular tools. Other interests include synthetic methodology, total synthesis, immunology, and biochemical and biophysical studies of carbohydrates.

Among awards he has received are the Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovator Award (1999), the Edgerton Award (2002), an Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (2003) and he was named a GlaxoSmithKline Chemistry Scholar (2002), and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (2002).

About The Seeberger Lab

Research at Dr. Seeberger's lab at the ETH is focused on elucidating the role of complex oligosaccharides involved in a host of medically relevant biological processes by employing molecular tools created by synthetic chemistry. In particular the Seeberger lab is interested in understanding the recognition events responsible for the interactions of oligosaccharides with proteins that control cell growth, cell differentiation, cell-cell interactions, bacterial attachment to target cells and signaling events involving the extracellular matrix.

To address these questions the lab is developing and applying techniques traditionally associated with the areas of organic synthesis, solid-phase chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, engineering and automation, analytical chemistry, biochemistry, enzymology, molecular biology, neurobiology, immunology and drug design.

Other core interests of its research program currently address the following areas: developing an automated oligosaccharide synthesizer; discovering oligosaccharides of biological importance; defining structure and function of heparin-like glycosaminoglycans; designing and evaluating tailor-made glycoconjugates; developing new synthetic methods and total synthesis of complex natural products; designing microreactors for rapid reaction screening and scaling up of reactions from laboratory to pilot plant scale.

About GlycoGenesys, Inc.

GlycoGenesys, Inc. is a biotechnology company that develops and licenses compounds based on glycobiology. The Company's drug candidate GCS-100, a unique compound to treat cancer, has been evaluated in previous clinical trials at low dose levels in patients with colorectal, pancreatic and other solid tumors with stable disease and partial response documented. The Company currently is conducting a Phase I dose escalation trial to evaluate higher dose levels of GCS-100LE, a low ethanol formulation of GCS-100, at Sharp Clinical Oncology Research in San Diego, California. Further clinical trials are planned for 2005. Further information is available on GlycoGenesys' web site: www.glycogenesys.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Any statements contained in this release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, risks of product development (such as failure to demonstrate efficacy or safety), risk related to FDA and other regulatory procedures, market acceptance risks, the impact of competitive products and pricing, the results of current and future licensing, joint ventures and other collaborative relationships, the results of financing efforts, developments regarding intellectual property rights and litigation, and other risks identified in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Actual results, events or performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Source: Business Wire

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