AVI BioPharma Announces Presentations at 50th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) Annual Me

   AVI BioPharma, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVII), a developer of RNA-based therapeutics, today announced upcoming presentations of preclinical data evaluating AVI-7100 against pandemic influenza and AVI-6006 against dengue virus infection at the 50th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) taking place September 12-15, 2010 in Boston, Massachusetts. Patrick Iversen, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research and Innovation at AVI, will make the following presentations:

Poster session 028(V), Influenza and Respiratory Viruses, on Sunday, September 12. Dr. Iversen's presentation is titled "A Novel Therapeutic Effective in a Ferret Model for Pandemic Influenza."

Poster session 181(F1), New Antiviral Agents, on Tuesday, September 14. Dr. Iversen's presentation is titled "New Therapeutic for Dengue Infection: Efficacy Studies in a Mouse Model."

Both presentations will be posted on the AVI BioPharma website in the "Our Programs" section after their respective poster sessions are completed.

AVI-7100 and AVI-6006 are AVI's lead therapeutic candidates for influenza and dengue virus infections, respectively. Both candidates employ AVI's patented PMOplus™ technology that selectively introduces positive charges to its phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer (PMO) backbone to improve selective interaction between the drug and its target.

About AVI BioPharma

AVI BioPharma is focused on the discovery and development of novel RNA-based therapeutics for rare and infectious diseases, as well as other select disease targets. Applying pioneering technologies developed and optimized by AVI, we are able to target a broad range of diseases and disorders through distinct RNA-based mechanisms of action. Unlike other RNA-based approaches, our technologies can be used to directly target both messenger RNA (mRNA) and precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) to either down-regulate (inhibit) or up-regulate (promote) the expression of targeted genes or proteins. By leveraging our highly differentiated RNA antisense-based technology platform, we have built a pipeline of potentially transformative therapeutic agents, including a clinical stage Duchenne muscular dystrophy candidate and anti-infective candidates for influenza and hemorrhagic fever viruses. For more information, visit www.avibio.com.

Forward-Looking Statements and Information

This press release contains statements that are forward-looking, including statements about AVI's technologies and their efficacy, potency and utility in the treatment of infectious diseases, and their potential to treat a broad number of human diseases. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond AVI's control, including that preclinical and clinical trials may not demonstrate safety and efficacy of any of our drug candidates and/or our antisense-based technology platform, and any of our drug candidates may fail in development, may not receive required regulatory approvals, or be delayed to a point where they do not become commercially viable.