Panel of advisors to guide Agilent on life sciences strategies

Palo Alto, CA — February 5, 2003 — Agilent Technologies has formed a Life Sciences Strategy Advisory Board to provide strategic advice about industry partnering and investment opportunities, emerging technologies, trends and business models. The first four members of the board were selected from a field of more than 125 candidates and met for the first time this week.

"The counsel of this accomplished and diverse set of advisors will be of great value in Agilent’s business and product planning," says Chris van Ingen, senior vice president and general manager, Agilent Life Sciences and Chemical Analysis. "This is one more step towards accelerating our growth as a leading supplier of gene expression, proteomics and pharmaceutical analysis solutions."

Advisory board members include:

– Paul Herrling, PhD, director of corporate research at Novartis International AG. Dr Herrling is professor of drug discovery sciences at the University of Basel, Switzerland and a full adjunct professor at the Harold Dorris Neurological Institute in La Jolla, California.

– Anthony F Martin, PhD, president and CEO of Molecular Probes. Dr Martin has over 25 years of experience in the biotech industry and most recently served as president of the molecular biology division of Invitrogen.

– Mark H Skolnick, PhD, founder and CSO of Myriad Genetics. Dr Skolnick directed the group that cloned the breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA1; found the full-length sequence of BRCA2; cloned the MMAC1 (PTEN) tumor suppressor gene; cloned a prostate cancer gene (HPC2); and discovered the tumor suppressor function of p16. He and several colleagues were the first to conceive of using restriction fragment length polymorphism technology as genetic markers, a breakthrough that underpins the Human Genome Project.

– Wendell Wierenga, PhD, CEO of Syrrx, an early stage spin-off of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. Previously, Dr Wierenga was a senior vice president of research at Parke-Davis/Warner Lambert, now Pfizer.