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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jul 6, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ImmunoGen Establishes Clinical Department to Oversee the Development of the Company's Clinical-Stage Compounds

ImmunoGen, Inc. (Nasdaq: IMGN) today announced that the Company has appointed Robert J. Fram, M.D., F.A.C.P, to head its newly established Clinical Department. Dr. Fram will lead the development of the Company's proprietary clinical-stage compounds. He will also provide medical input on the Company's other internal programs and its in- and out-licensing opportunities.

Mitchel Sayare, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO of ImmunoGen, commented, "Our establishment of a Clinical Department, headed by Bob, reflects our new stage: ImmunoGen now has two wholly-owned clinical-stage compounds in our proprietary product pipeline plus the financial resources to take them forward ourselves. Bob has extensive experience in Hematology/Oncology, unique expertise in the design and implementation of clinical development programs, and a passion to improve the treatment of cancer through the development of better therapeutics. We believe Bob is the right person to lead the clinical development of our products."

Dr. Fram is a graduate of Harvard College and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his post-doctoral training in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and in Hematology and Oncology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He is board certified in Hematology, Oncology, and Internal Medicine. Dr. Fram's extensive career in Hematology/Oncology and experimental therapeutics spans both industry and academia. He has served as an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and at the University of Maryland Cancer Center, and was a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Brown University Medical School. Dr. Fram has contributed to sixty-seven publications in the fields of experimental therapeutics and Hematology/Oncology including journal articles, book chapters, and published abstracts. In his positions at Knoll Pharmaceuticals, Ilex Oncology, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Dr. Fram developed and implemented clinical development programs for novel anticancer compounds.

About ImmunoGen, Inc.

ImmunoGen, Inc. develops targeted anticancer biopharmaceuticals. The Company's proprietary Tumor-Activated Prodrug (TAP) technology uses tumor-targeting antibodies to deliver a potent cell-killing agent specifically to cancer cells. Two ImmunoGen-developed TAP products have begun clinical evaluation: cantuzumab mertansine and huN901-DM1. ImmunoGen out-licenses its TAP technology in exchange for upfront, milestone, and manufacturing payments plus royalties. Companies developing products using ImmunoGen's TAP technology include Boehringer Ingelheim (bivatuzumab mertansine), Millennium Pharmaceuticals (MLN2704), and Genentech (Trastuzumab-DM1); ImmunoGen also has multitarget agreements with Genentech, Abgenix, and Millennium. ImmunoGen and Aventis have a collaboration to discover, develop, and commercialize antibody-based anticancer therapeutics. The agreement provides ImmunoGen with committed funding and includes milestone payments, royalties, and co-promotion rights.

This press release includes forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations. For these statements, ImmunoGen claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Various factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those discussed or implied in the forward-looking statements and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are current only as of the date of this release. Factors that could cause future results to differ materially from such expectations include, but are not limited to: the outcome of the Company's research and clinical development processes, including the anticipated advancement into the next stages of clinical testing of cantuzumab mertansine and huN901-DM1; the difficulties inherent in the development of pharmaceuticals, including uncertainties as to the timing, expense and results of preclinical studies and clinical trials; the Company's dependence upon existing and potential collaborative partners, and the outcome of the clinical testing of TAP compounds being developed by the Company's existing partners; uncertainty as to whether the Company's potential products or those of the Company's collaborators will succeed in entering human clinical trials and uncertainty as to the results of such trials; the ability of the Company's current capital resources and anticipated future collaborator payments to enable the Company to meet its current and projected operational expenses and capital expenditures for the next five to seven years; the risk that the Company and/or its collaborators may not be able to obtain regulatory approvals necessary to commercialize their product candidates; the potential development by competitors of competing products and technologies; uncertainty whether the Company's TAP technology will produce safe, effective and commercially viable products; and other factors more fully described in ImmunoGen's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2003 and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE: ImmunoGen, Inc.

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