Announcement no. 22

BioPorto’s patent rights for NGAL, the new biomarker of renal disorders

Today the European Patent Office (EPO) published the minutes of oral proceedings held on November 21, 2008, concerning Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s (CCH) European patent application on the use of NGAL as a marker of renal injury by measurement in urine.

CCH’s patent application

According to the minutes of the oral proceedings, the claims in CCH’s patent application have been partially accepted. The full minutes and underlying documentation of the oral proceedings are published on EPO’s homepage, www.epoline.org, under the patent application “A method and kit for detecting the early onset of renal tubular cell injury”, publication no. WO2004088276. As soon as possible, BioPorto will comment in further detail on the effect of the decision with regards to the patent rights already obtained by BioPorto.

BioPorto’s patent application

The action taken in relation to CCH’s NGAL patent application does not alter the fact that BioPorto’s first patent application on the measurement of NGAL as a biomarker of renal disorders has had a successful passage through the examination process. In August 2008, BioPorto was informed by the European Patent Office that the principal claims of the NGAL “cutoff” patent application, claims 1-17, had been approved for issue in Europe. BioPorto’s NGAL cutoff patent concerns the determination of NGAL as a diagnostic marker of renal disorders and differs from other NGAL patent applications by establishing the cutoff levels that are needed to distinguish between the larger NGAL rises that indicate kidney injury and the smaller rises that can be due to other conditions.

NGAL as a biomarker

In recent years, NGAL has proved to be the most promising and fastest responding new biomarker for kidney disorders, being especially relevant for the detection of acute kidney injury. Acute kidney injury carries a high mortality and may occur in 30-50% of critically ill patients or in up to 5% of all hospitalized patients. Early diagnosis of the injury, now made possible by using the NGAL test, will permit treatment initiatives to be taken that hitherto have been impossible to apply early enough to benefit the patient. NGAL is BioPorto’s primary focus area and the Company’s activities within it are currently concentrated on negotiating the sale of licenses to its NGAL patent rights.

Further information:

Thea Olesen, Managing Director

Christina Tønnesen, Investor Relations

Telephone: +45 4529 0000

E-mail: investor@bioporto.com