MRC Technology Enters Into an Exclusive License Agreement With Genentech

LONDON, July 12, 2010 - MRC Technology (UK) announced today that it has entered into
an agreement with Genentech, Inc., a wholly owned member of the Roche Group
(SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) for an exclusive licence to a series of small
molecule drug candidates for the potential treatment of neurological disease.

This is the first small molecule chemistry programme to come
out of MRC Technology's Centre for Therapeutics Discovery (CTD) and the first
major small molecule collaboration the CTD has formed with an industry
partner.

Under the terms of the agreement, MRC Technology will receive
an upfront payment and is eligible to receive clinical development milestone
payments and royalties on sales. Full financial terms and the target of the
small molecule project have not been disclosed.

Working with investigators funded through UK's Medical
Research Council, MRC Technology's CTD initiated a small molecule drug
discovery programme that included medicinal chemistry, biology, analytical
and DMPK Computational Chemistry. CTD was formed one year ago from the MRC
Technology Drug Discovery Group, expanding its capability and capacity to
provide the UK with a national drug discovery resource with the critical mass
to progress high quality projects towards clinical benefit. MRC Technology
works with targets not only from the UK's Medical Research Council but has a
pipeline of targets from academic organisations worldwide.

Dr Dave Tapolczay, CEO of MRC Technology, said, "We are
delighted that we have been able to partner this programme with Genentech,
and extremely pleased that the terms of our agreement reflect the value of
the small molecule drug discovery programme and support our innovative
business model."

"This licensing deal is just one example of the innovative
ways that MRC Technology is now exploiting both its small molecule and
therapeutic antibody capabilities. We can collaborate with other technology
transfer organizations, on a shared risk basis, to develop small molecule
drug discovery programmes and targets with therapeutic potential. When the
resulting clinical candidate is subsequently licensed, both parties will not
only accomplish their translational research aims, but also share in its
commercial success going forward."

Notes to Editors

About Genentech

Founded more than 30 years ago, Genentech is a leading
biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and
commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening
medical conditions. The company, a member of the Roche Group,
has headquarters in South San Francisco, California. For additional
information about the company, please visit www.gene.com.

About Medical Research Council Technology (MRC Technology)

MRC Technology is the exclusive commercialisation agent for
the UK Medical Research Council, working to translate cutting edge scientific
discoveries into commercial products. It is now the most successful academic
healthcare technology transfer organization in the world (AUTM Licensing
survey 2007).

MRC Technology bridges the gap between innovative basic
science and making medicine. It works to provide drug-like candidate
molecules to innovative new drug targets, and to translate innovative
antibody-based drug targets into potent and selective therapeutic antibody
candidates giving pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies new starting
points for drug discovery and development, based on MRC advances in science.

MRC Technology's Centre for Therapeutics Discovery (CTD)
collaborates with academic scientists to develop drug discovery projects
targeting diseases for which there is significant unmet need. It applies
state of the art computational and medicinal chemistry to produce "drug-like"
molecules with the potential to become therapies. Scientists from academia
benefit from the wealth of the CTD's expertise including provision of tool
compounds and reagents (including monoclonal antibodies) for further target
validation and characterization studies, in silico screening, and access to
medicinal chemistry, screening technologies and ADMET. CTD will also provide
academia access to its hybridoma production capability and its extensive
antibody engineering and expression expertise as well as its core antibody
humanization skills. This initiative will also enable UK scientists to tap
into MRC's recently announced Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS) and
collaborate with a high quality drug discovery capability whilst retaining
existing IP ownership.

    Media contact:

    Medical Research Council Technology:
    Jan Coates
    Business Development Officer
    MRC Technology
    E-mail: jan.coates@tech.mrc.ac.uk
    Phone: +44(0)20-7391-2773
    Website: www.mrctechnology.org

Medical Research Council Technology: Jan Coates, Business Development Officer, MRC Technology, E-mail: jan.coates at tech.mrc.ac.uk, Phone: +44(0)20-7391-2773