Signature BioScience Solidifies Management Team with Addition of Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Director of Finance and Administration.

Business Editors & Biotech Writers

BIOWIRE2K

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--May 1, 2001

New Senior Managers to Drive Proteomics-based Discovery Emphasis

and Business Growth

Signature BioScience, a development stage biotech company creating a breakthrough technology platform for true functional proteomics, today announced the appointment of David C. Spellmeyer, Ph.D., to chief scientific officer and vice president of drug discovery, and Nancy E. Pecota to senior director of finance and administration.

In his role, Dr. Spellmeyer will be responsible for building the new drug discovery capabilities and organization within Signature, as well as directing the existing applied biology efforts essential to validating the instrumentation technology under development within the company. Before joining Signature, Spellmeyer was executive director at DuPont Pharmaceuticals Research Laboratories, where he was responsible for computational chemistry aspects of drug discovery and information technologies involved in scientific, managerial and business development facets of corporate partnerships. Prior to his position at DuPont Pharmaceuticals Research Laboratories, Spellmeyer was vice president of computational sciences at CombiChem Inc. He also held various positions at Chiron Corporation within their structure and design group. Spellmeyer earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and computer science from Purdue University and a doctorate in theoretical organic chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ms. Pecota joins Signature to manage the financial, accounting and administrative functions of the company. Pecota was most recently director of finance and accounting at ACLARA BioSciences, where she was part of the management team that successfully took the company public. Prior to ACLARA, Pecota spent five years as corporate controller at dpiX, Inc., a spinoff of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Pecota also held various financial management positions at Westinghouse Corporation. She received a bachelor's degree in economics from San Jose State University.

"These accomplished and talented individuals are crucial additions to the exceptional team leading Signature's technological expansion and growth as a discovery organization," said Mark McDade, chief executive officer of Signature BioScience. "David's unique biotech and major pharmaceutical experience, coupled with his computational chemistry background, bring us the applications savvy to better direct the development of our novel microwave spectroscopy technology for protein and cell-based drug discovery. In addition, Nancy's extensive biotech expertise will prove invaluable to us as we continue to finance and grow."

Spellmeyer and Pecota join the existing Signature team, which includes Mark McDade, chief executive officer; John Hefti, M.D., Ph.D., founder and chief technology officer; Andrew P. Sandham, president and chief business officer; Richard Neeley, Ph.D., J.D., executive vice president of intellectual property; David Balaban, Ph.D., vice president of informatics and computational biology; and Mark Rhodes, Ph.D., vice president of advanced technologies. In addition, the company also announced that Joseph Heanue, Ph.D., has been promoted from a director in engineering to assume new responsibilities as vice president of product engineering, where he will direct the development of new laboratory instrumentation.

About Signature BioScience

A San Francisco Bay area biotech formed in late 1998, Signature BioScience has created a technology platform for true functional proteomics -- the real-time measurement and comparison of a wide range of molecular and cellular interactions in cell biology, proteomics and genomics applications. By embedding this technology in high-throughput analytical systems, Signature provides a valuable new resource for life science and pharmaceutical research, which will significantly increase the pace and quality of discovery of new drug targets and medicines. The company has grown rapidly to include a multi-disciplinary staff of molecular biologists, pharmaceutical assay experts, chemists, physicists, engineers and bioinformatics specialists. Signature currently employs 56 people, including 28 people with advanced scientific degrees. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.signaturebio.com.