Manuel Hidalgo, M.D., Ph.D., Joins ACLARA BioSciences Scientific Advisory Board

Manuel Hidalgo, M.D., Ph.D., Joins ACLARA BioSciences Scientific
Advisory Board
Another Distinguished Oncologist Highlights Company's Advancements in
Protein-Based Diagnostics 


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 27  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ACLARA BioSciences
(NASDAQ:ACLA) announced that Manuel Hidalgo, M.D., Ph.D., has joined its
Scientific Advisory Board.  Dr. Hidalgo is an Associate Professor of Oncology
and Co-Director of the Drug Development Program at the Sidney Kimmel
Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in
Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Hidalgo is considered a leading researcher in the development of targeted
therapies for the treatment of cancer in patients with solid tumors. His
research focuses on optimizing the clinical development of novel treatments by
measuring target receptor and molecular anomalies, as well as analyzing the
biological activity in tumor and normal tissues of patients treated with
specific therapies.  Dr. Hidalgo is the Principal Investigator in four new
clinical studies started within the last year at the Drug Development Program
at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine.

"I'm excited to join ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board as their technology and
approach offers a unique advantage in its ability to identify and measure
proteins with a high degree of sensitivity from solid tissue samples."  He
continues, "While genomic approaches provide insight, it is proteins and the
interaction between proteins that characterize particular types of cancer.  By
providing a sensitive and robust way to quantify the relationship between a
specific tumor and protein interactions, ACLARA's technology is uniquely suited
to become a clinical test for physicians to deliver truly personalized medicine
to their patients."

Dr. Hidalgo received his M.D. from the University Navarra Medical School in
Pamplona, Spain, and his Ph.D. in Infectious Diseases in Cancer from the
University of Autonoma in Madrid, Spain. In 1997, he began his career as a
clinical research fellow at the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San
Antonio, Texas, where he participated in the EORTC/NCI Exchange Fellowship and
AACR Young Investigator Fellowship in Clinical Research. He worked as both an
Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science
Center and as a clinical investigator at the Cancer Therapy and Research
Center.

In addition to publishing several peer-reviewed scientific papers, Dr. Hidalgo
has received numerous honors for his work, including the 2001 American Society
of Clinical Oncology Career Development Award

According to ACLARA Chief Executive Officer Thomas Klopack, "We are very
excited to have another leading physician, who is so involved with oncology and
targeted therapies research, join our advisory board.  We anticipate that Dr.
Hidalgo's input and expertise will help ACLARA establish the eTag System as a
robust clinical test that allows physicians to understand which targeted
treatment, or combination of treatments, will be most effective in combating
their patient's cancer."

ACLARA's Scientific Advisory Board now comprises eight world-renowned
physicians and researchers.  In addition to Dr. Hidalgo they include: David B.
Agus, M.D., Research Director at the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCLA, Carlos
L. Arteaga, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology and Director of the
Breast Cancer Research Program of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center at
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Jose Baselga, M.D., Professor of
Medicine at the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and the Scientific Chairman
of the Spanish Breast Cancer cooperative group SOLTI, Roy Herbst, M.D., Ph.D.,
Chief of the Section of Thoracic Oncology and Associate Professor at the
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, PJ Utz, M.D.,
Assistant Professor at the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at the
Center for Clinical Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine,
John Weinstein, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of
Molecular Pharmacology within the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer
Research and Owen N. Witte, M.D., Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and
Molecular Genetics at UCLA.

About the eTag System

The ability of the eTag System to identify difficult-to-detect protein
complexes in patient samples can provide unique insights to the likelihood of
an individual patient to respond to specific therapies.  In addition, since
ACLARA's eTag System requires only small amounts of biological material, and
have been shown to work in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections
(the standard format in pathology laboratories), both retrospective and
prospective analysis of clinical samples can be performed.

To further validate its eTag System, ACLARA is correlating its test results
with patient response data and outcome information to demonstrate the assays'
predictive power.  Currently, ACLARA is conducting studies with several
clinical collaborators based on the retrospective study of tissue samples from
patients participating in clinical trials for new drugs as well as from those
being treated with approved therapies.

About ACLARA

Founded in 1995, ACLARA is a biotechnology company working to provide
physicians and researchers products and services to make personalized medicine
a reality through its protein-based assay technology -- the eTag(TM) System.
ACLARA is dedicated to unlocking the power of pathway biology to accelerate the
development of next-generation targeted therapeutics, recognizing the most
appropriate patients for approved therapies and identifying the
highly-specific, protein-based biomarkers that will enable physicians to create
truly personalized treatment regimens for patients suffering from cancer and
other life-threatening disorders.

ACLARA is commercializing its proprietary eTag System to enhance and accelerate
drug discovery research and the preclinical and clinical development of
targeted therapeutics. ACLARA's technology may also enable the development of
highly-specific, protein-based diagnostics capable of providing physicians with
a powerful tool for creating personalized treatment regimens for patients
suffering from serious and difficult-to-treat cancers.  For more information on
ACLARA please visit the Company's web site at http://www.aclara.com/.

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this news release that are not historical are forward-looking
statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as
amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to factors that could
cause actual results to differ materially for ACLARA from those projected. 
Those factors include risks and uncertainties relating to the performance of
our products, anticipated progress in commercialization of our eTag(TM) assay
system; the potential for use of our eTag assays in clinical development
programs; the potential for use of our eTag assays as diagnostic tests; our
ability to successfully conduct clinical studies and the results obtained from
those studies; our ability to establish reliable, high-volume operations at
commercially reasonable costs; expected reliance on a few customers for the
majority of our revenues; actual market acceptance of our products and adoption
of our technological approach and products by pharmaceutical and biotechnology
companies; our estimate of the size of our markets; our estimates of the levels
of demand for our products; our ability to develop organizational capabilities
suitable for the further development and commercialization of our eTag assays;
the ultimate validity and enforceability of our patent applications and
patents; the possible infringement of the intellectual property of others;
technological approaches of ACLARA and our competitors; our pending merger with
ViroLogic, Inc., including the risk that the closing conditions or the merger
may not be satisfied and the merger may not be completed, and costs related to
the proposed merger; and other risk factors identified in our Form 10-Q for the
quarter ended June 30, 2004 and the Joint Proxy/Prospectus related to the
proposed merger with ViroLogic as filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.

Trademarks

ACLARA BioSciences is a registered trademark, and eTag and the ACLARA logo are
trademarks of ACLARA BioSciences, Inc. 

DATASOURCE: ACLARA BioSciences, Inc.



CONTACT:  investors, Alfred Merriweather, VP, Finance and CFO of ACLARA

BioSciences, Inc., [phone], or ; or media, Jennifer

Viera of Schwartz Communications, [phone], or ,

for ACLARA BioSciences, Inc.



Web site:  http://www.aclara.com/ 

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