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Sangart Announces Issuance of Patent for Hemospan® Oxygen Transport Agent

SAN DIEGO, CA (December 13, 2005) – Sangart, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen transport agents, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted to Sangart a new patent entitled "Methods and Compositions For Oxygen Transport Comprising A High Oxygen Affinity Modified Hemoglobin."

U.S. Patent No. 6,974,795 covers certain hemoglobin-based blood substitute products having a higher oxygen affinity than the underlying native stroma-free hemoglobin. This significantly expands the patent protection covering Sangart's products including its lead oxygen transport agent, Hemospan®.

Hemospan® is a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier designed to serve as an alternative to blood transfusions. A key property of Hemospan® is its high oxygen affinity which results in targeted oxygen delivery to tissues at risk of oxygen deprivation.

The inventors of the patent are Robert M. Winslow, M.D. and Kim D. Vandegriff, Ph.D.

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