SAN DIEGO, CA - (February 15, 1999) In an early move to establish itself as a global player in the field of bioinformatics, California based Structural Bioinformatics Inc. (SBI) has now begun the building up of a European Sales & Marketing organization. This step has been taken recognizing the need to be physically close to its customers and in response to an intense interest from the worldwide pharmaceutical industry to exploit new bioinformatic tools to design and select the most promising drug candidates quickly. SBI accelerates drug discovery by closing the gap from gene sequence to lead discovery and is a renowned leader within computer-based protein analysis. The Company has developed advanced algorithms that are used to calculate the dynamic 3-D structure of proteins from DNA sequence information. In turn, the 3-D information is used to design and select molecules from various chemical subclasses that will act as antagonists to the protein, thereby preventing progress of disease. SBI enables pharmaceutical companies to make sense of the enormous amount of genetic data emerging from sequencing of the human genome and to translate the data into structural information and, eventually, drug candidates.

Most recently, SBI entered into a research collaborations with three international pharmaceutical companies including Yamanouchi Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. and BioChem Pharma, aimed at developing various new compounds for the Asian, European and North American markets. Over the last six months, the SBI announced the successful structure-based design of TNF receptor antagonists, viral protease inhibitors, Bcl-2 antagonists, and erythropoietin receptor-active compounds.

In addition to research collaborations, SBI is due to launch its database of protein structures to pharmaceutical and other life science companies during second quarter 1999. Depending on their needs, companies will be able to access a subset or the entire set of protein structures contained in the database. Provided sequence information is available, SBI can even add the 3-D structure of an unknown protein to the database within weeks. The initial release of the database will include thousands of structures, and in future years is intended to be comprehensive eventually for the entire human genome, estimated to contain in excess of 100,000 protein structures. Former sales/licensing director from Nycomed Pharma, Ole Wiborg has been hired to run SBI's European subsidiary, Denmark-based SBI Advanced Technologies A/S (SBI-AT) and build the European Sales and Marketing organization. Ole Wiborg will be succeeding Bent Vabø who played a key instrumental role in establishing SBI-AT and who has held the position as Managing Director of SBI-AT since the incorporation of this subsidiary in 1998. Prior to, and concurrently during this time, Mr.Vabø has been running another company, Lab Vision Europe, to which he will be devoting his time. SBI-AT was originally established as a research unit to translate new theories about protein structure and folding developed by a group of Danish scientists into practically available tools enabling improved structure prediction. With the step to build a strong S/M organization, SBI-AT is now underway to establish itself as an integrated center for SBI's European computational and commercial activities.

Structural Bioinformatics Inc. provides an innovative computational solution, unifying protein structure, gene sequence, 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.

Available upon request:
- Photos of predicted protein structures
- Diagrams depicting the impact of the worldwide structural information explosion and SBI's I.T. (Information Technologies) solution for speeding drug discovery
- Additional company and investor information