Hercules Provides $10.0 Million Financing To Guava Technologies, Inc.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. (Nasdaq: HTGC - News), a leading debt and equity growth capital provider to technology and life science companies, announced that on Dec. 21, 2005 it provided $10.0 million of debt financing to Guava Technologies, a biotechnology company that develops, manufactures and markets unique, high-impact cellular analysis systems for the life science research marketplace.

"Guava Technologies sets the new 'gold standard' for cell-based research and overcomes the limitations of traditional cell analysis methods by providing personal, integrated systems that bring sophisticated cell analysis to the laboratory benchtop and individual scientist," said Kathy Conte, managing director of Hercules. "Guava's technology offers sensitivity, accuracy and a variety of applications but in a form that is ultra-compact, affordable, easy-to-operate and uses low sample volumes. In addition, Guava's technology generates 500 times less waste, and provides rapid, intuitive and easy-to-read results. The use of the Guava PCA systems leads to better, faster decision making, resulting in lower research and production costs."

Guava's products have broad applications to life sciences research, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical production today, but also offer potential for use in clinical testing and blood processing, as well as other areas where single cell analysis is important. The company is revolutionizing the way that cell culture monitoring and cell screening assays are performed, by providing compact micro-volume scale systems that make common assays in cell-based analysis accessible at the benchtop.

About Hercules Technology Growth Capital:

Founded in December 2003, Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. is a NASDAQ traded specialized finance company providing debt and equity growth capital to technology-related companies at all stages of development. The company primarily finances privately-held companies backed by leading venture capital and private equity firms and also may finance certain publicly-traded companies. Hercules focuses its investments in companies active in technology and technology-related industries such as computer software and hardware, networking systems, semiconductors, semiconductor capital equipment, information technology infrastructure, Internet consumer and business services, telecommunications, and life sciences. The company's investments are originated through its principal office located in Silicon Valley, as well as additional offices in the Boston, Boulder and Chicago areas. Providing capital to publicly traded or privately held companies backed by leading venture capital and private equity firms involves a high degree of credit risk and may result in potential losses.

For more information, please visit http://www.herculestech.com . Companies interested in learning more about financing opportunities should contact info@herculestech.com or call 650-289-3060.

About Guava Technologies:

Guava Technologies, Inc., a privately held biotechnology and medical device company, is a leading provider of on-demand, easy-to-use, cell analysis systems. The Guava Personal Cell Analysis (PCA(TM)) systems, including the Guava PCA, Guava PCA-96, Guava EasyCyte, and Guava EasyCyte Mini, are integrated, fully optimized, microcapillary flow cytometry systems with embedded absolute cell counting capability. Used worldwide by the life science, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industries, Guava's products have broad applications in scientific research and throughout the drug discovery and lead optimization process, as well as for cell counting, cell health profiling, and the optimization of commercial bio-pharmaceutical production. The Guava Systems are flexible, highly affordable and ultra-compact, requiring only a few microliters of sample volume, thus saving precious and expensive cells, reagents and compounds. Guava offers a variety of assays and dedicated software modules for the Guava Systems, enhancing their overall ease-of-use. More information about the company and its products is available at www.guavatechnologies.com.

Source: Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc.

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