VLGC Virologic (MM)

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ViroLogic, Inc. (NASDAQ:VLGC) today announced the appointment of William J. Welch as Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Mr. Welch joins ViroLogic as a member of the management team and will be responsible for leading the commercialization activities, including sales and marketing initiatives, for the oncology and HIV programs at ViroLogic. Tien Bui, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and Kenneth N. Hitchner, Vice President of Pharmaceutical Collaborations, will continue to manage those aspects of ViroLogic's HIV business and will report to Mr. Welch. "Bill brings extensive experience in leading marketing and commercialization activities to ViroLogic, having successfully built a commercial team for novel therapeutics as well as run marketing for a major diagnostics business. We are thrilled to have him join the team as we prepare to launch the first eTag assay for oncology in 2006 and continue to improve upon and add to our library of powerful tests in HIV," said William D. Young, Chairman and CEO of ViroLogic. Before joining ViroLogic, Mr. Welch was a corporate officer and Vice President of Sales and Marketing for La Jolla Pharmaceuticals, where he was employed from 1998 to 1999 and from 2001. In that position he was responsible for all commercial activities associated with a successfully filed NDA for lupus nephritis, for which an approvable letter was issued by the FDA. These activities included, among others, building a launch organization and infrastructure in sales, marketing, business systems, logistics and distribution, and national accounts. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Welch was Vice President of Global Marketing at Dade Behring MicroSan, where he led a $150 million microbiology diagnostic business. Prior to joining La Jolla in 1998, Mr. Welch worked for Abbott Laboratories, as General Manager of Abbott Ambulatory Infusion Systems, Senior Marketing Manager of Abbott Renal Care and as Manager of Strategic Planning, Corporate Planning and Development. Mr. Welch holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. About ViroLogic ViroLogic is a biotechnology company advancing individualized medicine by discovering, developing and marketing innovative products to guide and improve treatment of serious infectious diseases and cancer. The Company's products are designed to help doctors optimize treatment regimens for their patients that lead to better outcomes and reduced costs. The Company's technology is also being used by numerous biopharmaceutical companies to develop new and improved antiviral therapeutics and vaccines as well as targeted cancer therapeutics. More information about the Company and its technology can be found on its web site at http://www.virologic.com/. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking, including statements regarding the trend toward individualized medicine and the results of yet-to-be completed clinical studies related to the effectiveness of our eTag assays as predictive tools for targeted cancer therapies. These forward- looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties relating to the development of future products, the timing and ultimate size of pharmaceutical company clinical trials; the anticipated timing of the launch on an eTag product; the performance of our products; our ability to successfully conduct clinical studies and the results obtained from those studies; whether larger confirmatory clinical studies will confirm the results of initial studies; our ability to establish reliable, high-volume operations at commercially reasonable costs; our ability to successfully integrate the operations of ACLARA into our operations; expected reliance on a few customers for the majority of our revenues; our ability to hire and retain key personnel, competition from larger more established diagnostic providers; actual market acceptance of our products and adoption of our technological approach and products by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; our estimate of the size of our markets; our estimates of the level of demand for our products; whether payors will authorize reimbursement for our products; whether the FDA or any other agency will seek to regulate ViroLogic's in house clinical laboratory testing; our ability to comply with FDA regulations in order to establish and maintain diagnostic kit manufacturing operations; whether we will encounter problems or delays in establishing and validating eTag assays within our clinical laboratory; whether we will encounter problems or delays in automating our processes or expanding our capacity; whether the intellectual property underlying the Company's technology is adequate; whether we may be deemed to infringe on the intellectual property of others and whether licenses to third party technology will be available; and whether ViroLogic is able to build brand loyalty and expand revenues. For a discussion of other factors that may cause ViroLogic's actual events to differ from those projected, please refer to the Company's most recent annual report on Form 10- K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, as well as other subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake, and specifically disclaim any obligation, to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statements. DATASOURCE: ViroLogic, Inc. CONTACT: Alfred Merriweather, Vice President and CFO of ViroLogic, +1-650-635-1100; or Carolyn Bumgardner Wang of WeissComm Partners, +1-415-946-1065, , for ViroLogic Web site: http://www.virologic.com/

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