For Immediate Release

GENOSPECTRA AND BAYER ANNOUNCE A DEVELOPMENT AND DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT FOR BRANCHED DNA GENE EXPRESSION TECHNOLOGY

June 11, 2003

FREMONT, CA and TARRYTOWN, NY, -- Genospectra, Inc. and the Diagnostics Division of Bayer HealthCare LLC, a member of the Bayer Group (NYSE: BAY), announced today that they have entered into a development and distribution agreement to provide Genospectra, Inc. with access to Bayer Diagnostics’ patented branched DNA (bDNA) technology. Under the terms of the agreement, Bayer has granted Genospectra, Inc. exclusive rights to develop and distribute Bayer’s QuantiGene® bDNA product line in the life sciences research market, including the immediate sales and distribution of existing QuantiGene® products. Additionally, the agreement grants Genospectra, Inc. a license to use Bayer’s bDNA signal amplification technology to develop novel and proprietary bDNA assays and products for the research market worldwide. Bayer Diagnostics will continue manufacturing associated products and components.

“Branched DNA is an incredibly powerful technology for gene expression analysis and is on target with Genospectra’s strategy to provide novel products for Parallel Quantitative BiologyTM,” commented Dr. Gary McMaster, chief scientific officer of Genospectra. “We have been very impressed with the in-house performance of the QuantiGene® product - no other technology that we’ve tested can compete with bDNA in terms of accuracy or robustness. We are excited to extend and complement bDNA’s strengths with Genospectra’s proprietary technologies to create novel bDNA products for systems biology and drug discovery.”

Bayer’s bDNA technology is the basis for FDA approved in vitro diagnostic viral load assays for HIV, and hepatitis C virus kits. For the life sciences research market, QuantiGene® bDNA assays achieve unparalleled accuracy and robustness by coupling a sandwich hybridization assay with a proprietary signal amplification method. QuantiGene® products provide a robust measurement of gene expression levels directly from cell lysates, without the need for RT-PCR or other methods of RNA amplification.

QuantiGene® assays are currently in use at academic labs, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide for the accurate quantitation of gene expression in fields such as signal transduction, target validation, and toxicogenomics. As part of this new relationship, Genospectra will take over sales and distribution of this important product line and offer bDNA products at a price

competitive with quantitative PCR methods. Genospectra believes that significant market potential exists both for expanding the existing customer base, and for offering complementary bDNA assays to the life sciences research market including for studies of systems biology, cellular pathways, RNAi validation, and drug discovery.

Peter Knueppel, PhD, senior vice president of Nucleic Acid Diagnostics at Bayer Diagnostics commented, “We are pleased that this collaboration with Genospectra will ensure that the life sciences community gains continued access to QuantiGene® products, as well as to a series of new branched DNA products. bDNA technology has proven itself as the core technology in Bayer’s

successful assays for viral load. This partnership with Genospectra will allow Bayer to focus on the diagnostics market and enable Genospectra to continue to provide existing QuantiGene® assays as well as new products to the life sciences community. We look forward to working closely with Genospectra.”

The primary inventor of bDNA technology, Mickey Urdea PhD, is also a member of Genospectra’s scientific advisory board. Dr. Urdea added, “It is exciting to see bDNA technology in product development at Genospectra. When we first conceived of bDNA, I believed that it had the potential to make a strong impact on life sciences research applications. Genospectra is in an ideal position to make this potential a reality.”

About Genospectra, Inc.

Genospectra, Inc. is a privately-held life science company that is developing technologies and products for the performance of Parallel Quantitative BiologyTM. (PQBTM). Genospectra’s PQB platform provides direct measurements of the key molecular interactions in cellular pathways - the molecular events of life. Initially focused on cellular activities such as receptor activation, signal transduction and gene expression, Genospectra’s products are used in the fields of cell biology, systems biology and drug discovery. The company was founded in April 2000 and is based in Fremont, California. For more information, please visit www.Genospectra.com.

About Bayer Diagnostics

With approximately 7,000 employees worldwide and 2002 sales of $1.9 billion, Bayer Diagnostics (www.bayerdiag.com), based in Tarrytown, New York, U.S.A., is one of the largest diagnostic businesses in the world. The organization supports customers in 100 countries through an extensive portfolio of central, self-testing, nucleic acid and near patient care diagnostics systems and services for use in the assessment and management of health, including the areas of cardiovascular and kidney disease, oncology, virology, women's health and diabetes. Bayer Diagnostics' global headquarters in the United States operates as part of Bayer HealthCare LLC, a member of the worldwide Bayer HealthCare group.

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