SAN DIEGO, CA - (December 5, 2000) - Structural Bioinformatics, Inc. (SBI), a world-leading 3D-structure-based solutions provider, announced today that it has increased its technology arsenal with the recent acquisition of Moldyn, Inc. (Moldyn). By acquiring the former subsidiary of Photon Research Associates (PRA), SBI has harnessed advanced computational, structure refinement and pattern recognition algorithms. For the last twenty years, PRA of San Diego has been solving some of the most critical defense-related computational problems. Since 1993, Moldyn has become the technology leader in the application of these defense-related, high-speed computational methods to the areas of life sciences research and bioinformatics.

"Building upon its aerospace heritage, Moldyn has developed and extended advanced space- and defense-related technologies for accelerating large-scale computations, pattern recognition and data interpretation to the computational chemistry and bioinformatics fields," said Dr. Edward T. Maggio, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of SBI. "SBI's acquisition of Moldyn's scientific skills and its technologies brings unique and powerful tools to bear upon our three main areas of scientific and commercial focus: structural proteomics, computational drug discovery and analytical bioinformatics."

Researchers at Moldyn have been developing advanced proprietary algorithms to eliminate computational bottlenecks and to facilitate the conversion and integration of raw data into more useful and easily interpretable information in order to enable automated high-throughput proteomics applications. These include:

ASTER^TM (Automated STructure Estimation and Refinement) technology that dramatically speeds up protein 3D structure determination and refinement in support of structural genomics and structure-based rational drug design. ASTER processes NMR and X-ray data for large molecules two to three orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art approaches.

MBO(N)D-II^TM (MultiBody Order(N) Dynamics) combines the simulation of low-frequency molecular motions and protein structure dynamics, such as interdomain movements, with a new formulation of rigid body dynamics, numerical integrator, and a multiple-time-scales approach for the efficient treatment of water molecules in large solvated systems. MBO(N)D-II provides protein dynamics results one to two orders of magnitude faster than conventional methods.

MFD^TM (MultiFlex Docking) is a next-generation flexible-protein/flexible-ligand docking method, based on the molecular dynamics methodology underlying MBO(N)D-II, that will improve the efficiency of the lead discovery and optimization processes through more accurate high-throughput docking.

PeakDetect^TM, based on signal processing technology, solves the difficult peak detection problem for MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in linear, reflectron and PSD modes for comparative spectra applications.

PKFinder^TM is a new development intended for FTMS data reduction, which can be critical for proteomics applications. Advanced information processing approaches are under development for protein identification and mixture classification applications.

SEQID^TM uses multiple hypotheses tracking methods for de novo peptide sequence identification. These algorithms are the first of a suite of computational proteomics algorithms under development at Moldyn that will provide an integrated informational path from multi-source raw data to protein structure and function.

Structure Miner^TM provides very fast and accurate detection of structural similarities between protein structures. It is based on novel 2D and 3D reduced-variable representations, uniquely identifying each protein. Structure Miner permits high-throughput, sequence-independent computational screening of large-scale protein structure databases to identify all proteins structurally similar to a specified target protein for drug discovery, functional assessment and other applications.

Structural Bioinformatics is a world leader in computational proteomics -- the large-scale generation and use of protein structure and protein structural information. The Company has developed advanced technologies to generate highly refined three-dimensional structural models of proteins from primary genetic information and commercializes these technologies through its structural database products and through drug discovery collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies. SBI has offices in San Diego,CA; Cambridge, MA; and Hørsholm, Denmark.