SAN DIEGO, CA - (November 1, 1999) - Privately-held Structural Bioinformatics Inc. (SBI) today announced the election of Patrick J. McDonald to the Company's Board of Directors.

Mr. McDonald was most recently the Executive Director of Corporate Licensing for Merck & Co. Inc., where he was responsible on a worldwide basis for successfully negotiating license agreements and for fostering relationships with external partners from which a number of significant products and technologies emerged. Over his 32-year-career, Mr. McDonald has worked in a number of different capacities spanning sales, advertising, marketing planning, marketing and business development and licensing. He also was instrumental in establishing Merck's first competitive product launch team; the first predictive product launch model to determine the appropriate levels of manpower and promotional support for new products; and a corporate-wide new product competitive analysis review. Mr. McDonald is also a member of the Board of Synaptic Pharmaceuticals Corporation.

"The addition of Pat to SBI's Board of Directors is a milestone in the company's development," stated Edward Maggio, President and CEO of SBI. "We are honored to have this distinguished professional contributing his significant expertise as we develop new products for the pharmaceutical industry."

"I'm delighted to be joining SBI's Board at this exciting juncture in the Company's evolution," stated McDonald. "The pharmaceutical industry needs to use all approaches to find small-molecule leads more rapidly to fill their pipelines." McDonald continued, "With its DynaPharm^TM and protein modeling technologies, SBI provides a way to move from target gene sequences to leads quickly and efficiently."

Structural Bioinformatics is a world leader in computational proteomics - the study of the structural properties of proteins using mathematical algorithms. The Company has developed proprietary algorithms to generate three-dimensional structural models of proteins from primary gene sequence data, and to perform primary drug discovery screening in silico. SBI offers two subscription database products. The first, SBdBase^TM, is composed of thousands of structural models of proteins from more than 150 distinct families, which promises to accelerate lead optimization and rational drug design. The second is SVdBase^TM, a series of databases each containing structural models generated from genetic variations in a single, medically important gene, such as HIV reverse transcriptase, which promise to enable better target selection and optimize drug design. Its partner in generating HIV SVdBases is Quest Diagnostics, Inc. SBI also employs its technologies in collaborative R&D programs. Current partners include DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company, BioChem Pharma Inc. and Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.