Barcelona, Spain and Amsterdam, The Netherlands - December 27, 2005 - Spanish pharmaceutical company Laboratorios SALVAT, S.A. and Dutch life sciences company Key Drug Prototyping BV today announce the start of the DEADBUGS consortium for the design and development of a novel class of anti-infectives. The DEADBUGS consortium was formed by the two companies together with the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences of the Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands (SILS), and the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas-Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain (CIB/CSIC). The DEADBUGS project (Design of Antibacterial Drugs Based on Unexplored Genetic Structures) aims at designing new antibacterial drugs with broad spectrum of activity that target essential bacterial transcriptional regulators. Special emphasis will be put on the reduction of potential resistance development, thereby creating a new, long lasting line of defence against pathogenic bacteria.

Background Hospitals today are plagued by bacteria that are resistant to most or even all known antibiotics. This has made the treatment of some hospital acquired infections and certain causes of community acquired pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis very difficult if not impossible to treat. Unless strategies for the development of alternative antibiotics are initiated soon, this will have an enormous social impact on the sustainability of other developments in modern medicine and quality of life worldwide. Numerous reports of multi-drug resistant ‘superbugs’ can be found in the press today. Overuse of antibiotics, changes in the pharmaceutical industry and complacency about the importance of antibacterial drug research are blamed for the current crisis and the search for new antibiotics is now regarded as an urgent necessity. This project is aimed at delivering urgently needed novel antibiotics against the relentless rise of infection caused by multi-drug (methicillin) resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), multi-drug resistant Pneumococcus and vancomycin resistant Enterococcus (VRE). There are also clear possibilities to modify the drugs developed in this project to have activity against other kinds of drug resistant bacteria.

The DEADBUGS project is a collaborative effort of Laboratorios Salvat, (Barcelona), KeyDP, (Amsterdam) , SILS (Amsterdam), and CIB/CSIC (Madrid), with each partner having a distinctive role in the drug discovery process. This consortium has been given the EUREKA! label, a hallmark which distinguishes pan-European initiatives that develop innovative products, processes and services. The DEADBUGS project is funded in part by CDTI, an agency of the Spanish Ministry for Industry that aims to promote technological and industrial development, and by SenterNovem (The Hague) an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.

About Laboratorios Salvat- Laboratorios SALVAT, S. A. is an independent, wholly Spanish owned, pharmaceutical company dedicated to the research, manufacturing and marketing of new value-added medicines. SALVAT's early commitment to innovation led to the creation of a specific R&D Area within the Company and the importance attached to this area has been gradually and consistently increased. The results of this are the numerous patents which have been the basis for new, innovative drugs and pharmaceutical formulae that have enabled SALVAT to market products that are unique worldwide. SALVAT allocates 19% of the company turnover to R&D activities, a ratio that is among the highest in the industry in Europe; an increase of 400% over the period 1998-2001. SALVAT has invested in the construction of a new, technologically advanced R&D Centre comprising laboratories for Medicinal Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Biochemistry, Radioactivity Unit, Cellular Biology, ADME, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Formulation and Animal Breeding and the Departments of Molecular Modelling, Clinical Research, Patents and Quality Assurance. Salvat currently employs almost two hundred ninety people and manufactures more than nine million units of medication each year. The estimated revenues for 2005 are 45 M€.

About KeyDP- Key Drug Prototyping is an independent, privately owned Dutch company, established in 2001 and active in structure based drug design. The company focuses on High Throughput Crystallography using a combination of proprietary and ‘of-the-shelf’ technology, and has access to additional imaging technologies through participation in the Cyttron network. KeyDP uses its capabilities in fee for service programmes for pharma and biotech clients, in joint discovery partnerships and in in-house projects. In the vision of KeyDP, the structures of target proteins are key to a successful drug development program.