MorphoSys Unveils New Antibody Library, HuCAL PLATINUM®

Improvements to Result in Considerable Time Savings, Higher
Diversity, Affinities and Expression Rates

MorphoSys AG (FSE: MOR; Prime Standard Segment, TecDAX) announced
today the successful completion of a new proprietary antibody
library, HuCAL PLATINUM. Initial results show that the new antibody
library, which is approximately three-times larger than the former
version, HuCAL GOLD, can provide a more diverse range of fully human
antibodies. In addition, the new technology enables the generation
of antibodies having higher affinity as well as improved expression
rates. The improvements achieved with this next generation antibody
library are expected to significantly shorten timelines from antibody
discovery to pre-clinical development and result in antibody drug
candidates with improved characteristics. The HuCAL PLATINUM library
is to be presented today at the 19th IBC Antibody Engineering
conference in San Diego, California.

"MorphoSys is committed to furthering its technological leadership
and today's news is a landmark event in this regard. Being the latest
and most powerful version of phage display antibody libraries
developed by MorphoSys, HuCAL PLATINUM sets a new standard for
therapeutic antibody generation in this industry," commented Dr.
Marlies Sproll, Chief Scientific Officer of MorphoSys AG. "The new
library is now an integral part of antibody generation at MorphoSys
and the company's future product development programs will rely on
it. HuCAL PLATINUM will be a key component of our strategy to
establish an industry-leading pipeline of antibody-based drugs."

HuCAL PLATINUM contains several significant improvements over the
previous version of the HuCAL library. The new library is based on
the genetic information of approximately 45 billion different fully
human antibodies. Furthermore, a completely new approach to
reproducing the natural structure of an antibody's most important
region for antigen recognition (the heavy chain CDR3 region, or HCDR3
for short) was achieved using MorphoSys's TRIM technology. The
increased library size and a genetic re-design of the HCDR3-region
have so far yielded up to a 25-fold greater diversity of initial
binders compared with the previous version. This improvement
provides an even wider range of promising antibody drug candidates to
choose from an initial screen of the library. Additionally, certain
sequence motifs on the DNA and protein-level identified as
responsible for potentially limiting expression rates have been
eliminated or significantly reduced. In total, these sequence
updates have resulted so far in 2-fold increased average expression
rates of antibodies in the IgG format selected from the HuCAL
PLATINUM library and promise to shorten the time to completion of
entire antibody generation programs. As before, all resulting HuCAL
antibodies retain a fully human composition.

The new library is completely compatible with established screening
and selection methods developed by MorphoSys such as AutoCAL®,
CysDisplay® and RapMAT®. Additional technology modules of the
MorphoSys antibody technology suite currently in development will
build on the strengths of the new HuCAL library and provide even
faster and more direct access to high affinity antibody drug
candidates in the full IgG format. The Company has issued patents
and pending patent applications covering various aspects of HuCAL
PLATINUM in key markets worldwide, including the US and Europe.

The IBC Antibody Engineering presentation can be seen on MorphoSys's
website from Wednesday, December 10 by using the following link:
http://www.morphosys.com/platinum

Link to conference website:
http://www.ibclifesciences.com/antibodyeng/overview.xml

For further information please contact: Dr. Claudia Gutjahr-Löser,
Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations, Tel: +49 (0)
89 / 899 27-122, gutjahr-loeser@morphosys.com or Mario Brkulj,
Manager Corporate Communications & Investor Relations, Tel: +49 (0)
89 / 899 27-454, brkulj@morphosys.com

About MorphoSys:
MorphoSys is a publicly traded biotechnology company focused on the
generation of fully human antibodies as a means to discover and
develop innovative antibody-based drugs against life-threatening
diseases. MorphoSys's goal is to establish HuCAL as the technology of
choice for antibody generation in research, diagnostics and
therapeutic applications. The Company currently has therapeutic and
research alliances with the majority of the world's largest
pharmaceutical companies including Boehringer Ingelheim,
Centocor/Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Pfizer and Roche. Within these
partnerships, more than 50 therapeutic antibody programs are ongoing
in which MorphoSys participates through exclusive license and
milestones payments as well as royalties on any end products.
Additionally, MorphoSys is active in the antibody research market
through its AbD Serotec business unit. The business unit has
operations in Germany (Munich), the U.S. (Raleigh, NC) and U.K.
(Oxford). For further information please visit
http://www.morphosys.com/

HuCAL®, HuCAL GOLD®, RapMAT® and HuCAL PLATINUM® are registered
trademarks of MorphoSys AG

This communication contains certain forward-looking statements
concerning the MorphoSys group of companies. The forward-looking
statements contained herein represent the judgment of MorphoSys as of
the date of this release and involve risks and uncertainties. Should
actual conditions differ from the Company's assumptions, actual
results and actions may differ from those anticipated. MorphoSys does
not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements as far
as the wording of the relevant press release is concerned.

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