MORPHOTEK GETS "TECHNOLOGY COMPANY OF THE YEAR" AWARD.

Morphotek Inc., Exton, Pa. has been named "2004 Technology Company of the Year" by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. The award is based on a company's achievements, vitality, creativity and industry impact. Morphotek was selected because of its cutting-edge morphogenics technology that accelerates the genetic evolution of host organisms to yield sib cells yielding efficacious therapeutic proteins as well as sibs producing higher quantities of therapeutic protein for scaleable manufacturing.

"We are honored to be recognized by our peers for our achievements in discovering and implementing innovative biological systems for the development of biopharmaceutical products," said Nicholas C. Nicolaides, president and CEO of Morphotek. "This award speaks to the inventive nature of our technology as well as to the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and staff who implement our technology to optimize products being developed by our customers and those in our internal pipeline."

The Technology Company of the Year award is one of several awards given annually by the Chamber of Commerce to recognize success, achievement, leadership and innovation of businesses with 100 employees or less. Morphotek was named "2002 Biotech Company of the Year" by Ben Franklin Technology Partners and will be profiled as "The Company to Watch" in the January 2005 issue of BioExecutive International. The company has formed corporate alliances with leading academic, bio-pharmaceutical governmental organizations including Abgenix, Baxter Healthcare, Centocor, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Novo Nordisk, Protein Design Labs, Tanox, USAMRIID, Wistar Institute and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Morphotek(R) Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the generation of proprietary organisms for product discovery and development. The company has a validated and patented platform technology called morphogenics that rapidly enhances the natural process of genetic evolution within a targeted host to yield variants with novel, commercially important output traits. This versatile technology has been successfully applied to microbes, plants, and mammals to yield genetically diverse offspring that are suitable for agricultural and pharmaceutical product development in the areas of antibody and protein therapeutics, high-titer protein manufacturing, and drug target discovery. Morphotek also plans to launch a new antibody platform for developing high-quality, fully human therapeutic antibodies that significantly reduces the royalty burdens associated with current technologies. Internally, Morphotek employs its morphogenics technology to develop optimized therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer, inflammatory and infectious diseases. Its lead product, MORAb-003, is being developed as a treatment for ovarian cancer and will be entering clinical trials in early 2005.

For more information, call 610/423-6102 or visit http://www.morphotek.com.