Jan. 26, 2005 — Dendritic NanoTechnologies Inc. of Mount Pleasant, Mich., The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) of Midland, Mich., and Starpharma (ASX: SPL) of Melbourne, Australia, announced yesterday they reached an agreement that provides Dendritic and Starpharma with access to what the companies say is the world’s broadest patent portfolio in the field of dendrimers.

Under the deal, Dow will assign its entire intellectual property portfolio and associated royalties in the field of dendrimers (196 patents comprising 41 patent families) to Dendritic in exchange for an equity stake in the company. Starpharma, which already held an interest in Dendritic, will make an additional cash equity investment in the company in exchange for exclusive rights to intellectual property for polyvalent, dendrimer-based pharmaceutical applications.

“This move consolidates a great amount of the important intellectual property in the dendrimer field into one company. It will be very positive for developing the applications and further demonstrating the value of this technology,” said Mike Pirc, manager of intellectual property for Dow Chemical in a prepared statement.

Dendrimers are a class of nanostructures with physical properties that make them potential vehicles for targeting diseases and delivering drugs to fight them. Dendrimer technology was first developed at Dow when Dendritic founder Donald Tomalia was a Dow employee. Today, Dendritic sells and licenses more than 200 variations of dendrimers to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics companies.