SAN DIEGO, CA - (January 10, 2000) - Privately-held Structural Bioinformatics Inc. announced today the release of SBdBase^TM 2.0, a leading database for protein structural information. SBdBase^TM 2.0 offers significantly improved functionality for analyzing and comparing protein structures that can contribute to understanding protein structure and function. SBdBase^TM is a database composed of thousands of structural models of proteins from more than 150 distinct families. These protein models help to accelerate lead optimization and rational drug design by providing high-quality three-dimensional structures of proteins for which no X-ray crystal structures are available.

"In our development of the new version of the SBdBase^TM, we have listened carefully to our customers," says Dean Goddette, Ph.D., Vice President of Sales & Marketing. "Many of the new features have been introduced in direct response to their requests and desires. We are dedicated, first and foremost, to serve our customers. Future developments will be guided by their needs to ensure we maintain a 'best-in-class' product."

"The user interface has been dramatically improved to provide a more user-friendly environment," says Kal Ramnarayan, Ph.D., SBI's Chief Scientific Officer. "It provides better navigation and more functionality to view and analyze several structurally related proteins simultaneously and understand differences and similarities in protein structure and function. As well, the underlying architecture has been designed to allow new functionality to be added easily and quickly."

Structural Bioinformatics is a world leader in computational proteomics--the large-scale generation and use of protein structure and protein structural properties. The Company has developed advanced and proprietary computational technologies to generate highly refined three-dimensional structural models of proteins from primary gene sequence data that compare well to crystal structures, and to perform primary drug-discovery screening in silico on millions of compounds present in SBI's scaffold-specific virtual combinatorial libraries (CombiLib^TM modules) or our clients' in-house compound collections. SBI offers two subscription database products. The first is SBdBase^TM. The second, SVdBase^TM, is a growing series of database modules each containing structural models generated from genetic variations in a single, medically important gene, such as HIV reverse transcriptase or protease. This provides pharmacogenomic insights early-on in the drug discovery and optimization process, and facilitates the selection of optimal clinical candidates prior to initiation of clinical trials. SBI's partner in generating HIV SVdBases is Quest Diagnostics, Inc. SBI also employs its technologies in collaborative R&D programs. Current partners include BioChem Pharma Inc., Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company.