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Sangart Reports Positive Phase I Data For Its New Generation Oxygen Transport Agent - Hemospan®

San Diego, CA (August 2, 2002) – Sangart, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen transport agents, today announced successful Phase I clinical trial results for Hemospan®, a product designed to serve as an alternative for red blood cell transfusions.

The trial was conducted at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in April and May 2002 and involved healthy volunteer subjects. No adverse events attributable to Hemospan® were noted during the trial.

Hemospan® represents a revolutionary approach in oxygen transport technology and is distinct from blood substitute products that have languished in decades-old clinical research. Sangart's products are chemically modified hemoglobin solutions prepared from outdated human blood, designed specifically to maximize oxygen transport to tissues that need it most. Sangart's breakthrough discoveries and proprietary technologies have yielded products offering a number of important advantages. Studies indicate that Hemospan® is free of harmful vasoactivity, provides targeted oxygen delivery, and has an extended half-life, simplified production and a low cost profile. Sangart's technologies resulted from more than a decade of peer-reviewed research into the mechanisms of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin solutions.

Robert M. Winslow, M.D., Sangart Chairman and CEO, commented, "The design of our Hemospan® product is a radical departure from historical approaches to blood substitutes. This approach is validated by the positive results from our Phase I clinical trial. Hemospan® subjects did not experience any of the hypertension or gastrointestinal distress that earlier products developed by others noted in their published Phase I trials."

Dr. Bengt Fagrell, Professor of Medicine at the Karolinska Institute, commented, "There is an urgent need for a safe and effective alternative for the millions of people that require transfusions each year. I'm pleased to be working on a project that has the potential to make such an impact on world health."

Of the 36 million units of red blood cells transfused each year in the United States, Europe and Japan, approximately 70% could be candidates for oxygen transport agents in a variety of applications including trauma, elective surgery and ischemia. This translates into a potential multi-billion dollar market for a safe, effective and economical alternative to red blood cells.

The Company also announced that it expects to file an Investigational New Drug Application for Hemospan® with the United States Food and Drug Administration by year-end.

About Sangart

Sangart is a private biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of medical products designed for use as alternatives to blood transfusions. The products are chemically modified hemoglobin solutions prepared from outdated human blood, designed specifically to transport oxygen in a cell-free solution.

Dr. Robert Winslow, a world-renowned authority in the field of oxygen transport, founded Sangart in 1998. In the two decades prior to founding Sangart, Dr. Winslow and his colleagues studied and defined mechanisms of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin solutions, funded by competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. The counterintuitive discoveries by Dr. Winslow's group on the effective action of oxygen transport agents have been patented and published in numerous scientific articles. From this experience, Sangart designed its lead product, Hemospan®, using unique polyethylene glycol conjugation to create a hemoglobin-based product that is intended to serve as an alternative to donated blood.

The key breakthroughs in the development of Hemospan® were the understanding of the mechanisms of vasoconstriction and the development of simplified production methods that make the final product commercially viable. These breakthroughs laid the groundwork for Sangart's business concept of developing cost-effective oxygen carriers that can be used in lieu of transfused red blood cells during episodes of temporary blood loss, such as surgery or trauma.

To learn more about Sangart or Hemospan®, please visit www.sangart.com