Sangart patents blood substitute.

Sangart, Inc. (San Diego, CA), a biopharmaceutical company developing oxygen transport agents, announced that it received a Notice of Allowance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for the patent application entitled "Methods and Compositions for Optimization of Oxygen Transport by Cell-Free Systems." The new patent , which is part of a family of several United States patents that were previously issued, significantly expands the scope of protection available to Sangart's products including its lead oxygen transport agent, Hemospan. The entire family of patents is licensed to Sangart on an exclusive world-wide basis.

"This patent further strengthens our intellectual property position around our oxygen transport technologies and enhances our foothold in the competitive blood product market," stated Robert M. Winslow, M.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sangart. "The issuance of the new patent is a significant step in our quest to protect the technology and products that we have invented. The patent is a vital piece of support that will help us diligently and properly enforce our intellectual property rights against infringing products." The new patent will issue as United States Patent 6,432,918.

Hemospan represents a revolutionary approach in oxygen transport technology and is distinct from blood substitute products that have languished in decades-old clinical research. Sangart's products are chemically modified hemoglobin solutions prepared from outdated human blood, designed specifically to maximize oxygen transport to tissues that need it most. Sangart's breakthrough discoveries and proprietary technologies have yielded products offering a number of important advantages. Studies indicate that Hemospan is free of harmful vasoactivity, provides targeted oxygen delivery, and has an extended half-life, simplified production and a low cost profile. Sangart's technologies resulted from more than a decade of peer-reviewed research into the mechanisms of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin solutions.

Sangart is a private biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of medical products designed for use as alternatives to blood transfusions. The products are chemically modified hemoglobin solutions prepared from outdated human blood, designed specifically to transport oxygen in a cell-free solution.

Dr. Robert Winslow, a world-renowned authority in the field of oxygen transport, founded Sangart in 1998. In the two decades prior to founding Sangart, Dr. Winslow and his colleagues studied and defined mechanisms of oxygen transport by cell-free hemoglobin solutions, funded by competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. The counterintuitive discoveries by Dr. Winslow's group on the effective action of oxygen transport agents have been patented and published in numerous scientific articles. From this experience, Sangart designed its lead product, Hemospan, using unique polyethylene glycol conjugation to create a hemoglobin-based product that is intended to serve as an alternative to donated blood.

The key breakthroughs in the development of Hemospan were the understanding of the mechanisms of vasoconstriction and the development of simplified production methods that make the final product commercially viable. These breakthroughs laid the groundwork for Sangart's business concept of developing cost-effective oxygen carriers that can be used in lieu of transfused red blood cells during episodes of temporary blood loss, such as surgery or trauma.

Sangart, Inc. [phone]; www.sangart.com