Operating expenses increase 25% in line with new product development for anticancer drug company.

2002 NOV 14 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Antisoma PLC(ASOM), the biopharmaceutical company developing new drugs for cancer, announced its preliminary results for the year ended June 30, 2002.

Commenting on the results, Glyn Edwards, CEO of Antisoma, said: "This has been a year of sustained progress on all fronts as we continue to drive our products towards the market and to strengthen our anticancer pipeline with promising and innovative acquisitions. Our successful fundraising in April, in difficult market conditions, has further strengthened our ability to maximize value from these products and reinforced our confidence in the long-term success of the company."

Joint statement from the chairman and the chief executive:

In the past year, we have taken important steps to sustain our progress towards profitability: raising additional funds to cover future development costs, pushing forward our established programs, and in-licensing new intellectual property for development.

These achievements have been made despite increasing challenges in our operating environment, notably the difficult conditions in the financial markets, but also the need to meet tougher criteria from regulatory authorities in preparing products for license submissions.

Against this background, we succeeded in raising 23.7 million pounds (21.7 million pounds net of expenses) of additional funds in a Rights Issue. We also reacted positively to the need to meet an increased statistical hurdle in our largest clinical trial, the pivotal SMART study of pemtumomab in ovarian cancer. This was required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) following a meeting in June 2001, and meant that we needed to recruit an extra 120 patients into the trial. Recruitment of these extra patients is on track to be completed by the end of 2002.

Our actions this year show our determination not to be deflected from our core aim, which remains the generation of shareholder value by effective development of drug candidates acquired as promising early stage agents. We draw encouragement from the approval in the U.S. of the first radiolabeled monoclonal antibody, IDEC Pharmaceuticals' Zevalin, which recently gained a license for use in non-Hodgkin lymphoma.