SAN DIEGO, CA - (November 19, 1998) Privately held Structural Bioinformatics Inc. ("SBI") of San Diego, California announced today that it has developed a number of small molecule non-peptide lead molecules, in multiple chemical classes, active against the EPO receptor. SBI will continue to develop and refine the compounds while concurrently seeking one or more corporate collaborators to commercialize compounds emerging from SBI's research activities.

SBI uses a proprietary analysis of target sites on a protein structure together with virtual screening to find leads for a variety of structure-based drug design projects. If no 3D protein structure is available, the analysis is performed on a high quality protein model based in part on related protein structures and augmented with proprietary loop modeling and other refinement techniques.

"This is yet another excellent validation of our proprietary protein modeling approach to drug design which permits rapid generation of novel leads from gene sequences for which no protein crystal structures are available" said Dr. Edward Maggio, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of SBI. "We've had similar success over the last twelve months in other projects including development of antagonists for an important viral protease and for the TNF receptor, among others. Clearly, many other therapeutic targets are amenable to this approach."

Structural Bioinformatics provides an innovative computational solution, unifying protein structure, genomics, and combinatorial chemistry, to accelerate small molecule lead compound discovery and optimization. SBI is building corporate partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, gene discovery companies, and combinatorial chemistry companies ranging from broad technology collaborations to assistance with specific drug targets or target groups. SBI has major corporate collaborations with a number of pharmaceutical companies in North America and Japan.