ABL and Evivar Medical Enter into Agreements to Form a Global Strategic Partnership and IP Cross-Licensing for Disease Management and Personalized Healthcare of Hepatitis B and HIV Infections.

LUXEMBOURG & MELBOURNE, Australia -- ABL, S.A. and Evivar Medical Pty Ltd today announced the completion of agreements to cross-licence their respective intellectual property portfolios and to form strategic alliances based on the use of their proprietary disease management platforms in HIV and Hepatitis (namely TherapyEdge, ViroScore and SeqHepB).The agreements will include joint strategies in development and commercialisation of their products, and joint research efforts to develop new products.

Advanced Biological Laboratories S.A (ABL) and Evivar Medical Pty Ltd (Evivar) today announced the completion of agreements to cross-licence their respective intellectual property portfolios, and to form strategic alliances based on the use of their proprietary disease management platforms in HIV and Hepatitis B.

TherapyEdge is a comprehensive patient record hospital information system to be used for data and patient management, monitoring and reporting applications. It is already integrating decision support and expert systems for HIV or TB disease management, allowing personalized therapy selection and optimal diagnostic monitoring and evaluation. Through HL7, TherapyEdge has already interfaced with Laboratory and Hospital Information Systems in Europe, Asia, Africa and soon in the USA. It can also be combined with the ViroScore Suite sequence database and drug resistance (HIV and TB) interpretation systems to create a powerful global clinical and research patient management system. It is used in over 75 hospitals and clinical settings in 35 countries as their primary longitudinal patient record and research tool, by government organizations to track program indicators and expenditures, by researchers to learn more about the resistance profiles and by virologists and clinicians to improve the quality of care.

The Evivar SeqHepB system can be used to identify HBV mutations present in the patient and to determine and predict resistance levels to the various available medications. SeqHepB is an unique viral genomics sequence analysis program that is linked to a dynamic and centralized HBV genomic database to enable virologists in their research efforts. Evivar provides a secure, on-line decision support tool for those interpreting HBV drug resistance and treating patients with HBV. Evivar enables physicians to personalize the treatment of patients with chronic HBV, selecting the right drug, at the right time in response to the mutations diagnosed. The SeqHepB system and intellectual property emanates from the laboratory of Professor Stephen Locarnini, a world renowned expert in Hepatitis B and antiviral resistance, from Melbourne Health (Melbourne, Australia).

"Our partnership with Evivar Medical to develop an interface between TherapyEdge and the Evivar SeqHepB systems is an important milestone for ABL's platform to enable physicians in their ability to manage more and more complex treatment and diagnostics decisions," said Dr Chalom Sayada, President and CEO of ABL. "Evivar's expertise and disease management platform for Hepatitis B is a truly complimentary addition to ABL's infectious diseases management technologies"

Mr Bernie Romanin, CEO of Evivar Medical, stated "We are very excited about our strategic partnership with ABL. The combined platforms offer virologists and physicians diagnosing and treating Hepatitis and HIV with enhanced clinical and research management tools. Optimized patient disease management systems like TherapyEdge and SeqHepB, leading to improved personalized care, will enable the development of the necessary solutions to achieve substantial cost savings for our Hospitals".

About ABL, S.A.: Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL), S.A., is a biotech company founded in 2000 as a spin-off from the European academic research center, CRP-Sante Luxembourg and in 2004, acquired the control of TherapyEdge, Inc. TherapyEdge is a biotech company founded in 2000 as a spin-off from Triangle Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which had been acquired by Gilead Sciences in December 2002. TherapyEdge and ABL's expertise lies within infectious diseases, with particular focus on resistance patterns and clinical patient management for HIV-1, tuberculosis, hepatitis,malaria and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections. http://www.therapyedge.com

About Evivar Medical: Evivar is a joint venture company established in February 2006 to provide accurate and timely therapy management for Hepatitis B patients through its SeqHepB programme - a web-based decision support tool to assist physicians to optimise and individualise the treatment schedule of patients with chronic hepatitis B. The Company provides therapy management services to chronically infected Hepatitis B patients. Evivar is also the exclusive licensee of intellectual property relating to methods for detecting drug resistance to Hepatitis B and variants of Hepatitis B.http://www.evivar.com