Ecopia Receives No Objection Letter For Clinical trials

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Ecopia Receives No Objection Letter from Health Canada for Cancer Phase I Clinical Trial

Thursday February 2, 3:33 pm ET

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(CCNMatthews - Feb. 2, 2006) - Ecopia BioSciences (TSX:EIA - News) announced today that it has received a No Objection Letter from the Therapeutics Products Directorate of Health Canada for the commencement of a Phase I clinical trial relating to the Company's anticancer agent, ECO-4601.

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Ecopia is proposing to conduct a Phase I clinical trial with up to 30 patients who will be recruited at the Clinical Research Unit of the Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital (JGH), a McGill University Teaching Hospital. Dr. Gerald Batist will chair the trial and Dr. Petr Kavan will be the Principal Investigator. Dr. Batist chairs the Department of Oncology of the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University and is the Scientific Director of the JGH-based Montreal Centre for Experimental Therapeutics in Cancer. Dr. Kavan is an Associate Professor of the Department, the Director of the Adolescent and Young adult Oncology Program of the McGill University Department of Oncology, and an oncologist at the JGH.

The type of patient to be recruited is one who suffers from one of six types of cancers and is refractory to current chemotherapies. Such cancers are glioblastomas, breast, prostate, ovarian, lung and colon cancers. The purpose of the trial is to test the safety and tolerability of ECO-4601. The clinical trial involves a 21-day cycle where different patients will receive escalating dosages of the compound via continuous infusion using ambulatory pumps for 14 days, followed by a seven-day rest. Recruitment of patients will begin before the end of this month.

About Ecopia

Ecopia is finding novel anticancer therapies from soil-dwelling microorganisms that are one of the most prolific sources of drugs. Our current focus is to move our flagship compound ECO-4601 through Phase I clinical trials. ECO-4601 is a novel small molecule that crosses the blood brain barrier and is effective in significantly inhibiting primary brain tumor growth and other types of cancers. Just like well-known chemotherapies such as doxorubicin and mitomycin C, ECO-4601 comes from microorganisms that live in common soil. However, unlike these drugs that were discovered many decades ago, ECO-4601 represents a new chemical class that is the fruit of a very unique drug discovery platform called the Decipher® technology. The common shares of Ecopia are listed on the TSX (symbol:EIA).

Additional information about the Company can be obtained from Ecopia's website at www.ecopiabio.com.