19 April 2006

Peakadilly announces EUR 6 million first close of series A financing; Appoints Nick McCooke as CEO

GHENT, Belgium - 19th April 2006 - Peakadilly NV today announced that it has completed the first close of a Series A financing raising EUR 6 million. The transaction was led by Life Science Partners (LSP) and co-led by Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC). Peakadilly also announced the appointments to the board of directors of Nick McCooke as CEO, and Martijn Kleijwegt and Zeev Zehavi as non-executive directors representing LSP and JJDC respectively.

The new proceeds will be used to increase the capacity of Peakadilly's protein biomarker discovery operation based on its proprietary MASStermind™ technology, enabling it to expand its relationships with pharma and diagnostic companies and to accelerate development of its own diagnostic and pharmacodiagnostic products. Coincident with the funding, Peakadilly founder, VIB (Flanders Interuniversity Institute of Biotechnology), completed the contribution in kind to Peakadilly of the core technology underpinning MASStermind.

Nick McCooke, who joins the company as CEO, brings considerable experience in the start-up and growth of biotech and pharma services businesses in Europe, the USA and Japan. As the first CEO of Solexa, he took the ultra-throughput DNA sequencing company from university spinout to its reverse takeover of a US based company and resulting NASDAQ listing. He takes over from founding CEO, Koen Kas, who becomes CSO.

"I am very pleased to be joining Peakadilly at this exciting stage of its development and delighted this comes at the same time as funding from two leading life science investors known for their constructive contribution to company development," said Nick McCooke. "The company has already cut its teeth on projects with big pharma and the response has been very positive, so I know we have something special. The task is now to build on these excellent foundations including creating long term value from our own product development activities."

"I believe Peakadilly has a significant commercial opportunity through applying its unique protein biomarker discovery technology both to third party projects and to it own product development," said Martijn Kleijwegt of LSP. "Their technology represents a significant advance over other approaches. We see good validation from the granted patents and revenue-generating projects with pharma."

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Notes to editors:

About the MASStermind™ technology

Peakadilly has successfully implemented and developed protein biomarker discovery technology developed by the group led by Prof Joel Vanderkerchove at VIB and the University of Ghent. It offers significantly higher throughput, dynamic range and sensitivity compared with other approaches. This results in much higher probability of biomarker discovery success.

About Peakadilly

Peakadilly was founded in late 2004 to exploit the protein biomarker discovery technology developed at VIB and the University of Ghent. In this short time, it has successfully implemented the technology and won revenue generating projects with big pharma. It applies the technology both to third party projects and to its own projects for developing a new generation of diagnostics and pharmacodiagnostic products.

About LSP

LSP is a pan-European life science venture group with offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston. The group has invested in over 40 life sciences companies since 1988 and stood at the basis of companies such as Crucell, Rhein Biotech, Pharming and Qiagen. Recent exits include Devgen (Euronext), Jerini (Frankfurt Stock Exchange), DNAge (sold to Pharming) and KuDOS (sold to AstraZeneca). Current portfolio companies include BioXell (Italy), Celmed (Canada), IDEA (Germany), Octoplus (Netherlands), OMS (Belgium), Santarus (USA), and Zealand (Denmark). The LSP group has $ 450 mln under management. Further information is available at www.lspvc.com

About JJDC

Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC) is the venture capital subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. JJDC makes private equity investments in venture funded health care companies. Portfolio companies include those in the fields of pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, diagnostics and consumer products. JJDC also leads and manages internal investments in selected promising technologies.

About VIB

VIB, the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, is an enterpreneurial research institute with activities in the fields of healthcare, agbio and technology development. Every year, VIB publishes over 350 peer reviewed papers, including 50 publications in high impact journals such as Nature, Cell, Science, EMBO and Plant Cell. VIB manages a patent portfolio exceeding 150 patent families, has executed more than 400 agreements with industrial partners, established start-up companies such as Devgen, CropDesign, Ablynx, Peakadilly and Solucel and provides 12.000 m² bio-incubator facilities to research intensive biotech companies. VIB also distributes scientifically substantiated information about all aspects of biotechnology to a broad public.