SAN DIEGO, CA - (May 6, 1999) - Privately-held Structural Bioinformatics Inc. ("SBI") of San Diego, California announced today the development of a number of small molecules in multiple chemical classes which bind to the human apoptosis inhibitory protein. The Bcl-2 gene product is an important therapeutic target in the apoptosis signaling cascade that prevents the programmed death of malignant cells and thus contributes to the growth and spread of many human cancers. SBI's compounds have been shown to inhibit Bcl-2 binding to its acceptor protein specifically. 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 protein structures modeled using proprietary technologies, together with virtual screening of real compound and virtual compound libraries to find leads for structure-based drug design projects.

"Our proprietary protein modeling approach to drug design allows us to generate novel leads rapidly starting from gene sequences for which no protein crystal structures are available," said Dr. Edward Maggio, President and CEO. "We have successfully applied this technology to six clinically-important protein targets on behalf of three corporate pharmaceutical collaborators over the course of the last 18 months. In each case, multiple chemical series (chemical scaffolds) of antagonists were generated for each target in the viral protease, protein kinase, hormone and apoptosis areas."

Structural Bioinformatics Inc. accelerates lead discovery by closing the gap from gene sequence to lead discovery and is a world leader in computer-based protein analysis. The Company has developed advanced algorithms that are used to calculate the dynamic 3-D structure of proteins from sequence information using comparative modeling augmented with energy-based methods. In turn, the 3-D information is used to design and select small molecules from various chemical subclasses that will act as inhibitors or antagonists to the protein. 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.