London, UK, 16th February 2010 ‐ Executives from Medical Research Council Technology (MRCT) (London, UK) and O2h (Cambridge, UK) announced today an agreement under which O2h will provide multi‐FTE ‐synthetic chemistry services to the drug discovery programmes at MRCT.

MRCT translates cutting edge scientific discoveries into commercial products, two of which (Tysabri and Actemra) are already on the market. The MRCT Centre for Therapeutics Discovery works closely with the MRCT Intellectual Property and Business Development Division and is rigorous in the selection of well‐defined and characterised targets, and considers novelty, validation and ‘druggability’. In addition, the group works on targets where there is a clear strategy for progression and development.

Dr Justin Bryans, Director of Drug Discovery at MRCT’s Centre for Therapeutics Discovery said “India has rapidly become one of the foremost providers of high quality chemistry support for the drug discovery sector, and we are delighted to expand our portfolio of collaborators with this new initiative with O2h. We believe this partnership will significantly improve the translation of basic research towards clinical benefit”.

Sunil Shah, CEO, O2h “Our scientific team has a proven track record in discovery services and we are proud to be leveraging our capability as we begin this collaboration with one of the premier drug discovery research groups in the UK.”