Ambit and Roche Announce Collaboration and Venture Financing

Business Wire,  August 26, 2004  

Tags: collaboration, financing, Roche Holding AG

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SAN DIEGO & BASEL, Switzerland -- Roche and Ambit Biosciences today announced a multi-year collaboration, alongside a new equity financing round for Ambit, led by Roche. Under the collaboration, Roche will use Ambit's proprietary kinase screening platform to profile and select small-molecule kinase inhibitors. Ambit will receive milestone payments and royalties on drugs developed through the collaboration. Additionally, Roche led a Series C round of financing that raised over $21 million in the initial close.

"We are very pleased to enter into a new collaboration with Ambit," said Peter Hug, Global Head of Pharma Partnering. "Combining Ambit's unique kinase profiling capabilities with our knowledge, efforts, and experience in drug development will enable us to discover new drugs more quickly."

"We are honored that Roche has decided to support Ambit by taking an equity stake in our company and initiating a multi-year screening collaboration," said Scott Salka, CEO of Ambit. "Our collaboration with Roche is a strong endorsement of our proprietary small molecule kinase inhibitor development platform."

About Roche as a Partner

Roche is a valued partner to over 50 companies worldwide. During 2003, Roche entered into 20 alliances in discovery, early research and technology, 11 of which extended or expanded existing relationships. Roche's alliance strategy is to enable our partners to grow through a flexible and collaborative approach.

About the Roche Venture Fund

The Roche Venture Fund invests in early stage biotech and diagnostics companies to support innovative technologies and medicines. Based in Basel, Switzerland, the Roche Venture Fund invests globally with a portfolio of over 25 companies in 10 countries.

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading innovation-driven healthcare groups. Its core businesses are pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is number one in the global diagnostics market, a leading supplier of pharmaceuticals for cancer and a leader in virology and transplantation. As a supplier of products and services for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people's health and quality of life. Roche employs roughly 65,000 people in 150 countries. The Group has alliances and R&D agreements with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai.

About Ambit

Ambit is a development stage biopharmaceutical company. Ambit employs its Kinase Profiling Platform both in collaboration with pharmaceutical partners and internally to develop novel drugs to treat major human diseases. Ambit's Kinase Profiling Platform is an industry-leading high-throughput panel of over 120 quantitative human kinase assays. Ambit has successfully used its platform technology to build a promising pipeline of pre-clinical small molecule drug leads expected to have a high probability of clinical and commercial success. Ambit is currently pursuing programs in oncology and stroke/neuroprotection, and anticipates commencing clinical trials in 2005.

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