Arena Pharmaceuticals' CEO Jack Lief talks to The Wall Street Transcript.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2001

The Wall Street Transcript has published an in-depth interview with Jack Lief, CEO of Arena Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq:ARNA), in which he talks at length about the company's future.

Click here to listen to a live webcast for the RBC Dain Rauscher Wessels Biotechnology "Gene To Drugs" Genomics & Life Sciences Conference Issue http://www.twst.com/dr3conference.html

The entire 2,300-word interview is available online at http://www.twst.com/info/info341.htm

Lief gives an overview of the company. "We're a three-year old company that focuses on a technology that significantly reduces the gene discovery to drug discovery process. We look at a particular type of drugable target of cell surface receptors, G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Our technology allows us to reduce the time from the receptor gene discovery to the setup of an assay from perhaps a decade to a period of only a few months. And that, as you can imagine, allows us a large number of targets that we can address."

Lief explains, "With the Human Genome Project coming to completion, we see that there will be a huge number of new drugable target opportunities that are going to be becoming available. For diseases that have only been addressed via symptomatic relief, now there is an opportunity to actually cure those types of diseases because receptors are such an important part of how normal cells and normal physiology work in the body."

Looking forward, Lief states, "We have strong revenue growth, which will drive our income statement, both near-term and long-term. We have a huge new drug discovery pipeline, which will discover lead compounds at perhaps 800 different, highly drugable receptor targets. There has never been a company, to my knowledge, that has gone after an entire large class of genomic targets in this fashion to essentially finish the drug discovery process in a relatively short period of time. So I think the short-term prospects are very good for Arena. The medium and long-term prospects are even better."

This interview is part of a 159-page RBC Dain Rauscher Wessels Biotechnology "Gene To Drugs" Genomics & Life Sciences Conference Issue available at http://www.twst.com/info/info341.htm or by calling 212/952-7433

The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations. For subscription information call 800/246-7673.