BioTime Optimistic as Its Products Address Military Needs.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE2K

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 2002

BioTime, Inc. (AMEX:BTX) announced today that in addition to the growing commercial acceptance of Hextend(R) and BioTime's increasing revenues, there is also a growing recognition that BioTime's products address certain specific military needs. Hextend is BioTime's proprietary blood plasma volume expander currently used in hundreds of leading hospitals nationwide to treat blood volume lost during surgery. It is the only plasma expander approved in the United States that contains 6% hetastarch in lactated electrolyte injection.

A protocol highlighting Hextend in the treatment of combat casualties appeared in a Special Report in the September 2002 issue of Anesthesiology News. The report, entitled "Strategies To Reduce Military and Civilian Blood Transfusions" (in reference to an effort under the acronym "STORMACT"), proposed an algorithm in which 6% hetastarch in lactated electrolyte injection was used for treating wounded military personnel.

In the report, Dr. Lewis J. Kaplan, Director of Emergency General Surgery, Yale University School of Medicine, stated that the STORMACT resuscitation algorithm is already being used by some United States Special Forces teams in the field. Dr. Kaplan is a member of the STORMACT team and the symposium faculty.

The report was from a STORMACT symposium held at the Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas in May 2002. STORMACT was founded in direct response to the events of September 11. It consists of a team of nationally recognized civilian experts in blood usage reduction and of volunteer experts in the United States Army, Navy and Air Force created to address the problem of how to limit blood usage in war or disaster situations. The meeting was sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Blood Management (SABM).

In addition to recommending the use of Hextend, the STORMACT protocol considers the use of hyperbaric oxygen and other modalities in the treatment of wounded battlefield personnel. BioTime is currently studying animal models utilizing Hextend and hypothermia, in conjunction with its proprietary hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

More recently, an article appeared in the October 2002 issue of the Annals of Plastic Surgery describing the use of Hextend containing bicarbonate and 20% glycerol in the preservation of deep-frozen rat arteries. The article, entitled "Effect of cryopreservation on patency and histological changes of arterial isogeneic and allogeneic grafts in the rat model" by Drs. Ewa Komorowska-Timek, Harry J. Buncke, and their colleagues at Buncke Clinic of San Francisco, CA, and the Department of Surgery, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, MI, described the use of this modified Hextend solution to preserve rat arteries at liquid nitrogen temperatures. Previous studies at BioTime in conjunction with this group indicated that full thickness rat skin grafts could also be preserved using a similar solution and protocol. BioTime's proprietary solutions containing bicarbonated Hextend and 20% glycerol are trademarked under the name HetaFreeze(TM), and are not presently approved for human use. Reconstructive plastic surgery plays a vital role in treating combat casualties. The use of freeze-preserved tissue is common in many reconstructive plastic surgical procedures.

In the April 2002 issue of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, an article appeared entitled "Multidisciplinary management of a Jehovah's witness patient for the removal of a renal cell carcinoma extending into the right atrium." The article was authored by Dr. David M. Moskowitz, Dr. Aryeh Shander and their colleagues at New Jersey's Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Shander is a member of the STORMACT team and the STORMACT symposium faculty. During the procedure Hextend was used as part of a surgical protocol in which a kidney tumor was removed which had grown up into the vascular system and heart of a Jehovah's witness. The patient's treatment involved acute normovolemic hemodilution (ANH), followed by the induction of deep hypothermia and 27 minutes of cardiac arrest, during which the tumor was removed. ANH involves the replacement of a portion of the blood volume with a surgical fluid, and collection of a similar amount of the patient's blood to be returned when needed at a later stage in the procedure. ANH is of interest to researchers looking to minimize the use of blood in treating combat casualties.

Low temperature surgical procedures are also of interest in military medicine due to their possible use in extending the time during which very serious wounds requiring lengthy surgeries can be treated. A manuscript describing the use of Hextend in low temperature animal research has been recently accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal addressing military issues.

Research involving fluid resuscitation with Hextend also appeared in the October issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, in an article by Drs. Andrew T. McCammon, Vance Nielsen and their colleagues in the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. The article describes studies in rabbits in which blood coagulation was compared in animals treated with albumin or Hextend.

"It is pleasing to see that BioTime's Hextend, currently employed by some members of the United States military overseas, is being considered for more extensive use," said Dr. Segall, BioTime's chairman and CEO. "It is also gratifying to learn of studies of BioTime's other products, which may, following the appropriate clinical trials and regulatory approval, lead to an expanded military-related product portfolio for BioTime."

BioTime, headquartered in Berkeley, California develops blood plasma volume expanders, blood replacement solutions for hypothermic (low temperature) surgery, organ preservation solutions and technology for use in surgery, emergency trauma treatment, and other applications. Information about BioTime can be found on the web at www.biotimeinc.com.

The matters discussed in this press release include forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to the results of clinical trials of BioTime products; BioTime's ability to obtain United States Food and Drug Administration and foreign regulatory approval to market its products; competition from products manufactured and sold or being developed by other companies; the price of and demand for BioTime's products; BioTime's ability to negotiate favorable licensing or other manufacturing and marketing agreements for its products; and the availability of reimbursement for the cost of BioTime products (and related treatment) from government health administration authorities, private health coverage insurers and other organizations. These and other risk factors are discussed in BioTime's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.