NANOCARRIER AND KIRIN BREWERY TO ANNOUNCE JOINT RESEARCH AGREEMENT

Tokyo, Japan, November 25, 2002 -  Nanocarrier Co., Ltd. (NanoCarrier) and Kirin Brewery Co., Ltd. (Kirin) announced today a Collaborative Research Agreement to develop novel anti-tumor therapeutics by combining NanoCarrier's proprietary micellar nanoparticles* delivery technology and Kirin's fully human antibody technology.

Under the terms of the Agreement, NanoCarrier will provide its micellar nanoparticles which entrap the anticancer agent inside, and Kirin will provide human antibodies which recognize the surface molecule of tumor cells.  By conjugating the human antibody to the micellar nanoparticle surface, NanoCarrier and Kirin will collaborate to develop cutting-edge anti-cancer therapeutics with high specificity and controlled release.

"We highly value our partnership with Kirin where we aim for a significantly greater degree of active targeting in tumor treatment," said Ichiro Nakatomi, Ph.D., the President and CEO of NanoCarrier.

"We believe that our collaboration with NanoCarrier provides an enabling path forward in the development of human antibody therapeutics," said Katsuhiko Asano, Ph.D., President, Pharmaceutical Division of Kirin.

NanoCarrier is an R&D-driven venture enterprise based in the Chiba prefecture of Japan.  NanoCarrier was primarily established to create nanometer-scale particles to deliver pharmaceuticals, genes, diagnostic reagents and medical devices and to work in partnership with leading researchers in the field.  The technology was originally developed by Kazunori Kataoka, Ph.D., Professor at University of Tokyo, Masayuki Yokoyama, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Teruo Okano, Ph.D., Professor at Tokyo Women's Medical University, and Yukio Nagasaki, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Science University of Tokyo.  NanoCarrier strives to contribute to society by manufacturing novel medicines that apply newly developed technologies and materials.  NanoCarrier has been making strong efforts to develop applications of proprietary micellar nanoparticles.  The Agreement with Kirin, along with other R&D Agreements with GlaxoSmithKline and Nippon Kayaku, will provide NanoCarrier opportunities to contribute great advances in pharmacotherapy.

Kirin's Pharmaceutical Division is applying its expertise in biotechnology towards the development of therapeutic products focusing on Kirin's three core fields:  Renal diseases, cancer and immunological disorders.  Kirin has focused on the development of a diversified product pipeline using its TC Mouse™ Technology, which is a powerful drug discovery platform to generate a broad range of fully human monoclonal antibodies with high affinity and increased specificity.  Under it's collaboration with Hematech, LLC, Kirin has been involved in the development of the TC Cow which carries human chromosomal fragments which contain the complete human immunoglobulin loci.

*Micellar Nanoparticles (often called polymeric micelle).

In general, nanoparticles used in drug delivery systems are 50 to 1000 nanometers in size with bi-layer structures comprising inner hydrophobic and outer hydrophilic polymers.

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