Aclara Q1 results

Aclara BioSciences from Mountain View, CA, US has reported financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2004.

Revenue for the period was $597,000, compared with $179,000 for the same three months period in 2003. Total operating expenses for the three months in 2004 were $4.7m, a decrease of $2.1m or 32%, compared with $6.8m in the comparable quarter of 2003.

Reflecting the improved revenue and the continued reduction in expenses, net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2004 was $3.7m, a reduction of 40% from the net loss of $6.2m in the first quarter of 2003.

Total cash resources, comprising cash and mar-ketable investments, were $85.3m. The reduction in these balances during the first quarter was $3.1m.

Business Progress

During the quarter, in addition to its standard assay business, Aclara's principal focus has been on further evaluation and validation of eTag assays as aides in the development of individualised medicines, particularly targeted cancer therapies. The ability of eTag assays to identify difficult-to-detect protein complexes may provide unique insights to the likelihood of particular patients to respond to specific pharmaceuticals. In addition, the ability of eTag assays to retrospectively address small amounts of clinical tissue samples that have been previously stored in a formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded format enables physicians to analyse samples from past and current clinical trials as well as from commercially available drugs to compare potentially predictive assay results with actual drug response data. 'An important element of our strategy is to conduct studies with our clinical collaborators based on retrospective study of tissue samples derived clinical trials on both commercial drugs and clinical drug candidates,' said Thomas Klopack, Aclara's chief executive officer. 'We are looking forward to in-creasing our visibility within the oncology community through these studies conducted with leading clinicians.'