-DATA PRESENTED AT AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY MEETING-

Les Ulis, France - June 2, 2003 – GenOdyssee S.A., a biotechnology company discovering and developing novel therapeutics from human genetic diversity, today presented pre-clinical data on its natural functional variants of interferon alpha  (IFN α) in a poster presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

IFN α, a naturally occurring protein, is commonly used to treat several types of cancer including malignant melanoma and kidney cancer. However, the currently available IFN α treatments have limited efficacy in solid tumors, and generate dose dependent toxicity. By applying its proprietary method of screening samples from individuals representing 85% of the world’s human genetic diversity, GenOdyssee has identified nine functional variants of IFN α.

Dr. Jean Maral, Vice President of Pre-clinical and Clinical Affairs for GenOdyssee, presented data on the in vitro and in vivo antiviral, antiproliferative and immunomodulatory activities of its IFN α variants compared to IFN α2b. In in vivo studies in both mouse and primate models, GenOdyssee’s most promising variant, GEA009.2, demonstrated higher antitumor activity and lower toxicity. In a murine model, more than 80% of mice with leukemia survived 70 days when exposed to GenOdyssee’s variant, as compared to only 40% in the group treated with IFN α2b (p<0.05). In another murine immunogenic tumor (melanoma) model, GenOdyssee’s variant showed significantly better activity, with 50% survival, compared to the IFN α2b treated group, with 0% survival (p<0.05). In the primate model, GEA009.2 variant had no effect on body temperature in contrast to those treated with IFN α2b, suggesting significant therapeutic indices improvement with GenOdyssee’s variant compared to IFN α2b.

In vitro studies analyzing the activity of GenOdyssee’s variants on human dendritic cell maturation and stimulation demonstrated that two of GenOdyssee’s IFN α variants, including GEA009.2, had increased immunomodulatory effects as compared to IFN α2b. The antiviral and antiproliferative activities of these variants were comparable to or lower than that of IFN α2b.

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“These data provide proof of concept for our innovative approach to drug discovery and development, in which we seek to select naturally occurring variants of existing therapeutic proteins to create a new generation of products with superior therapeutic indices to those currently available,” said Dr. Jean Maral, Vice President of Pre-clinical and Clinical Affairs for GenOdyssee. “It is clear that while the medical community has made great strides in developing new cancer treatments, many patients suffering from various cancers are in need of improved treatment options. These results suggest that our IFN α variants, which may be used as cancer treatments on their own, or as adjuvants to therapeutic cancer vaccines, may offer improvements over current treatment options. They will potentially be more efficacious, and produce fewer adverse side effects. We look forward to generating additional data as we initiate clinical trials in 2004.”

The study was done in collaboration with the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Paris, and the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France.

About GenOdyssee S.A.

GenOdyssee (GO) is a biotechnology company founded in 1999, aimed at discovering and developing therapeutic cytokines and growth factors with higher therapeutic indices than state-of-the art drugs of the industry. GO achieves this by using an innovative discovery approach to functional SNPs. The company is looking for naturally occurring mutations in the population that confer breakthrough pharmacological advantages to the corresponding genes. GO applied this pioneered genetic concept to genes coding for therapeutic proteins, natural drugs produced by the body, so that for any mutation with such positive pharmacological effects discovered in the population would correspond a clear and rapid product development rational. Three years later, the company has assembled a first pipeline of more than 80 lead candidates and first leads are planned to enter clinical development in 2004. GO has filed a total of 32 patent applications in Europe, the US, and Japan, protecting its innovative discovery method (3 families), and first lead candidates (11 families).

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Contact:

GenOdyssee Euro RSCG Life NRP

Jean-Louis Escary, Ph.D.Mary Claire Duch (U.S.)

President & CEO Phone: 212-845-4278

Phone: 33-1-69-29-80-55 Veronica Sellar (Europe)

Email: escary@genodyssee.com Phone: 44-207-726-4452