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Sangart Completes Enrollment in Phase II Clinical Study of Hemospan®

SAN DIEGO, CA (September 08, 2004) – Sangart, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen transport agents, announced today the initiation of a Phase II clinical trial involving Hemospan® (MP4), a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier designed to serve as an alternative for blood transfusions. This clinical trial will include 90 patients undergoing elective orthopedic surgeries at six hospitals in Sweden. Patient enrollment is expected to be completed within several months.

Sangart also announced its receipt of a joint grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command. The peer-reviewed grant, entitled "Oxygen Carriers for Hypovolemic Circulatory Collapse," will provide Sangart with an estimated $1.3 million.

Robert M. Winslow, M.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sangart, commented, We are pleased to continue the progress of Hemospan® through the clinical trial process and look forward to obtaining further support for this product's clinical potential. We are also grateful for the support that we are receiving from the U.S. Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health in further demonstrating the potential resuscitative attributes of this product. We anticipate that these efforts will provide further support for the advantages of Hemospan® as a radical departure from other oxygen transport agents in development.

Sangart's approach to the development of oxygen transport agents employs novel technology, the result of more than a decade of peer-reviewed research into the mechanism of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin. Preclinical and clinical studies indicate that Hemospan® is free of harmful vasoactivity and provides targeted oxygen delivery to tissues at risk of oxygen deprivation.

About Sangart

Sangart is a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of medical products designed for use as alternatives to blood transfusions.

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's lead product, Hemospan®, was designed 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 are designed to 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