Contact: Matt Schutte, Director of Corporate Communications | 614-675-3686
Dr. Jane Henney and Mike Hooven elected to Omeris Board of Trustees
David Scholl elected as Chairman

Columbus, Ohio | December 21, 2004 – Omeris recently announced that Jane Henney, MD, senior vice president and provost for health affairs at the University of Cincinnati, and Mike Hooven, chairman and CTO of AtriCure, have joined the organization’s Board of Trustees. Omeris is a non-profit entity designed to accelerate and promote bioscience commercialization, research, and education in Ohio.

Since July 2003, Dr. Henney has guided operations of the academic and research enterprise of the UC Medical Center, including the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences and Hoxworth Blood Center. Prior to arriving at UC she served after nomination by President Clinton and confirmation by the U.S. Senate as the Commissioner of Food and Drugs of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She served in this capacity from 1998 to January 2001. She has also served over the past twenty years in a series of senior health policy leadership positions in the public sector, including posts with the National Cancer Institute, the University of Kansas Medical Center and the University of New Mexico.

Mike Hooven is a co-founder of Cincinnati-based AtriCure and Enable Medical Corporation. AtriCure was founded in 2000 as a spinoff of Enable Medical and is focused on the development of products and procedures to treat atrial fibrillation, the world’s most common heart irregularity. Mike has over 20 years of experience in the development of medical devices and has more than 50 issued and pending U.S. patents in the medical device field. Prior to co-founding Enable Medical Corporation, Mike spent six years at Ethicon Endo-Surgery as Director of New Product Development.

Omeris also announced the election of David Scholl, PhD, to chairman of the Board. He is president and CEO of Athens, Ohio-based Diagnostic Hybrids, which develops and manufactures diagnostic cell cultures and virus detection kit systems used in the clinical diagnosis of infectious and autoimmune diseases. Dr. Scholl has been an Omeris Board member since 2002.

The Omeris Board of Trustees also includes: John Bantle, II, PhD, Ohio University; Timothy Biro, Ohio Innovation Fund; Mark Collar, Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals; Tony Dennis, PhD, Omeris; Joseph Hahn, MD, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Peter Kleinhenz, CID Equity Partners; John Rice, PhD, Triathlon Medical Ventures; Richard Rosen, Battelle; Fred Sanfilippo, MD, PhD, The Ohio State University; Bill Sanford, SYMARK; Jim Scozzie, PhD, BioEnterprise; and Donald Wetherhold, RxPedite.

Omeris is a non-profit organization supported by the Thomas Edison Program of the Ohio Department of Development. Its mission is to accelerate bioscience discovery, innovation and commercialization of global value, driving economic growth, and improving quality of life in Ohio. Omeris is headquartered in Columbus, with regional business development affiliates in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Athens.