Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc.: Cook Incorporated Reports First U.S. Implant Of A Paclitaxel-Coated Coronary Stent.

Business Editors

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 16, 2001

Angiotech Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ANPI)(TSE:ANP.) was notified today by Cook Incorporated that, for the first time in the United States, a patient with heart disease has been treated with a unique, new coronary stent coated with the anti-cancer drug, paclitaxel, to help prevent the stented artery from reclosing.

The procedure, which marked the start of Cook's U.S. clinical trial of its new Logic(tm) PTX Coronary Stent, was performed on an unidentified patient at Elyria Regional Medical Center in Elyria, Ohio on July 10.

"Everyone at Cook Incorporated is thrilled that we have started the process of bringing this potential breakthrough in treating coronary artery disease to patients in the United States," said John DeFord, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cook Incorporated. "We still have a long way to go before achieving our ultimate goal of receiving FDA clearance to market the Logic(tm) PTX stent here. But we are confident that our strategic, methodical approach to evaluating drug-eluting coronary stents will result in a superior product that physicians worldwide will use with confidence."

Cook Incorporated, a COOK(r) company, recently completed patient enrollment in its Asian-based and European clinical trials of paclitaxel-coated coronary stents. Clinical data from both 180-patient studies will be released later this year, Cook officials confirmed. Its U.S. clinical trial of the new Logic(tm) PTX stent is expected to include up to 800 patients, with enrollment concluding in early 2002.

In 1993, Cook Incorporated became the first manufacturer to introduce coronary stents to the United States. These tiny wire scaffold-like devices, which have become the most successful and widely used innovation in interventional cardiology of the last decade, are inserted inside blocked sections of coronary arteries and expanded into place using a balloon catheter in a procedure called an angioplasty. In as many as 40 percent of cases, a new blockage requiring further treatment develops at the site of the angioplasty due to scar tissue growth and inflammation, a condition referred to as restenosis. More than 500,000 Americans are treated for restenosis annually.

Cook Incorporated has developed a proprietary polymer-free technology to coat coronary stents with the drug paclitaxel to inhibit restenosis. The metal body of the stent is coated with a minute quantity of the drug, which is gradually released into the cells of the arterial wall after stent placement.tech Pharmaceuticals, acts to prevent excessive cell regrowth at the site of the angioplasty, which researchers anticipate will reduce or eliminate restenosis. Cook Incorporated's drug-eluting coronary stents are investigational devices not approved for sale in the U.S. at this time.

"The Logic(tm) PTX coronary stent is the first breakthrough paclitaxel-coated device product to arrive in the United States for testing," said William Hunter, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Angiotech Pharmaceuticals. "U.S. patients will benefit from Cook's unique European and Asian trials that scrutinized 10 different drug doses in 360 patients to arrive at what we believe to be a better outcome."

With international headquarters in Bloomington, Ind., privately held COOK(r) (www.cookgroup.com) is a leading designer, manufacturer and global distributor of minimally invasive medical device technology for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Since its founding in 1963, COOK has been committed to product innovation, skilled hand-craftsmanship and unsurpassed customer satisfaction, earning the company global recognition among medical professionals. Cook Incorporated is acknowledged as an innovator in catheter technology, wire guides, introducer needles and sheaths, stents and stent-grafts, embolization coils, drainage catheters, tissue-engineered medical biomaterials, vena cava filters, implanted cardiac lead extraction technology and other minimally invasive devices. More than 40 companies in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia design, produce, manufacture and distribute COOK brand medical devices to physicians and other medical professionals around the world.

Angiotech Pharmaceuticals (www.angiotech.com) is a Canadian pharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of medical coatings and treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases through reformulation of the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel.

A conference call on the Cook study will be held today, July 16, 2001 at 2:00 PM PST. The call will be webcast on the Angiotech website at www.angiotech.com. A recording of the call will be available until July 23, 2001 by calling [phone] and entering Access Code 19366176.

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Keywords: Cardiology; stents; medical device manufacturing; Indiana; Canada