EpiVax, Inc. Achieves Record Revenues and Alliance with Major Pharmaceutical Company Computational Immunology Leader Records $2.5M in Revenues

Providence, R.I., April 11, 2008 – The Slater Technology Fund has reported that portfolio company EpiVax, Inc., a Providence-based biotechnology firm specializing in computational immunology, achieved record revenues of $2.5 million in calendar 2007. Resulting from a mix of grants and commercial contracts, the record revenues also reflect research and development payments received through a substantial corporate partnership with a major pharmaceutical company.

Founded in 1998, EpiVax develops and implements computational immunology tools to further biotechnology research and drug development. The company focuses specifically on using immuno-informatics to make safer, more effective human therapeutics, including design and development of new vaccines and the de-immunization of functional therapeutics. The bioinformatics tools developed at EpiVax are also applicable to the rapidly-growing and increasingly promising study of immuno-pharmacogenomics, or individualized therapies.

“Our antigen discovery, vaccine design, and de-immunization technologies have the potential to significantly and positively impact the drug development process,” said Anne DeGroot, M.D., CEO and president of EpiVax. “This new partnership validates our approach and signifies a serious investment in computational immunology as a viable therapeutic development tool. The power of immuno-informatics has barely been tapped.”

Slater Technology Fund has provided EpiVax with an aggregate of $225,000 in seed funding since the company’s initial founding. Subsequently, the company has steadily expanded its scientific team and product development efforts. Originating in Dr. DeGroot’s labs at Brown University, the company for a time operated research labs at Slater’s Richmond Square biomedical research labs in Providence, before establishing its own research and commercial operations at its current location in Providence’s Jewelry District.

“EpiVax has made great progress in this past year,” said Richard G. Horan, senior managing director of the Slater Technology Fund. “In particular, the partnership with a major pharmaceutical company is very exciting, as alliances such as this provide the validation of commercial viability which is so important to the growth and development of a biotechnology company.”

About EpiVax, Inc.
EpiVax, Inc. is dedicated to merging bioinformatics with in vitro immunology to generate new therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune diseases as well as new vaccines for infectious diseases such as HIV, TB, and hepatitis. T cell epitope mapping, the selection of target peptides from any protein sequence, is a powerful resource for the development of novel protein therapeutics. EpiVax research shows that peptides chosen by the EpiMatrix System™ are highly likely to provoke an immune response when presented to T cells. EpiVax tools can also accurately deimmunize proteins. For more information about EpiVax, please visit www.epivax.com.

About Slater Technology Fund
The Slater Technology Fund is a state-backed venture capital fund that invests in new companies committed to basing and building their businesses in Rhode Island. Slater focuses its resources on the support of entrepreneurs who have the vision, leadership and commitment to build substantial commercial enterprises. Slater typically invests at the inception stage in the development of a new venture, often based upon ideas and technologies originating in academic institutions and/or government research laboratories located within the region. In most cases, investments are premised upon the possibility of raising substantial follow-on financing, from venture capital investors or from strategic partners, with a view toward accelerating the generation of significant numbers of high-value, high-wage jobs over the intermediate to longer-term.