Metabolex Raises Over $8 Million in Private Financing

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--July 14, 1998--Metabolex, a development-stage biotechnology company focused on diabetes, today announced that it has raised over $8 million through the company's fourth round of private financing. The lead investor in this latest round was Lombard Odier & Cie, of Zurich, Switzerland. Other participants in the financing included additional Swiss investors Banca della Svizzera Italiana of Lugano, as well as investors from New York. The investor group was introduced to Metabolex by Bay City Capital, LLC, a merchant bank specializing in life sciences.

"We were very pleased to receive this additional investment in Metabolex supporting our scientific focus on diabetes," said Thomas A. Glaze, Metabolex president and chief executive officer. "It will be used to advance new efforts including functional genomics aimed at further understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying type 2, or adult-onset diabetes."

Metabolex, Inc. is a privately held company foundedto develop therapeutics for diabetes and related metabolic diseases. The company's goal is to combine its expertise in the biology of diabetes with a variety of technological approaches to develop proprietary treatments that affect the principal causes of the disease. Metabolex's main pharmaceutical effort is a program focused on Glucose Transport Signal Transduction pathways; the company has partnered the diabetes aspects of this program to Abbott Laboratories as the keystone of their major pharmaceutical discovery effort in diabetes. Metabolex additionally has a program aimed at developing drugs to affect the abnormalities of insulin-producing beta cells in type 2, or adult onset, diabetes. The company's nutritional program, centered on its Insulin Potentiating Factor, has been licensed to Ross Laboratories, a Division of Abbott Laboratories.

   CONTACT: Metabolex
             Thomas A. Glaze, President and CEO
             David W. Pritchard, V.P. Business Development and CFO
             510/293-8800
                      or
             J. Kureczka Associates
             Joan E. Kureczka/Jesse Fisher
             415/821-2413

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