Prime Minister And First Minister Officially Open Cyclacel's R&D facility

DUNDEE - 22 February 2002 - The British Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, the First Minister for Scotland, the Rt Hon Jack McConnell MSP, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Rt Hon Helen Liddell MP, today officially opened the new research facilities of UK-based cancer therapeutics company, Cyclacel.

The 43,000 sq. ft. research centre is designed around a central core of laboratories and state-of-the-art instrumentation cluster, surrounded by scientist cubicles, computer modelling workstations and administration areas. Purpose built for Cyclacel, the centre is a base for the Company's rational drug design capabilities and houses scientists skilled in advanced technologies such as protein characterisation, crystallography, in silico modelling, magnetic NMR mass spectroscopy, target screening, as well as medicinal chemistry, preclinical research and clinical development.

Sir William Stewart, Cyclacel's Non-executive Chairman, commented, "In his speech the Prime Minister called Cyclacel a "symbol" of the type of company that should arise from academic laboratories. It is gratifying to see the hard work of Cyclacel's people be recognised in such a clear fashion."

Spiro Rombotis, Cyclacel's Chief Executive, commented, "The official opening by the Prime Minister, First Minister and Secretary of State for Scotland was an honour for Cyclacel and a recognition of our team's achievement of a high level of maturity in just five years. Combined with the target gene discovery work carried out by our Polgen division in Cambridge, our Dundee-based R&D laboratories are a centre of excellence for the discovery and development of new therapies for cancer and other serious diseases. Although much remains to be done, we are now poised to start expanding our clinical pipeline with a number of programmes emerging from Cyclacel's discovery efforts."