SAN DIEGO, CA - (April 30, 2001) - Privately held Structural Bioinformatics, Inc. (SBI) today announced that that that the number of protein families represented in the ProMax^TM database has doubled to over 400 families comprising thousands of novel drug-target structures.

SBI's proprietary protein modeling processes effectively address the major limitations of earlier protein structure generation protocols. SBI's team of more than a dozen highly skilled protein modelers use patented ab initio loop generation algorithms for accurate surface structure prediction, proprietary core-structure correction algorithms, extensive dynamic refinement, and energy-minimization techniques to produce protein structures comparable in quality to those modeled from X-ray crystallographic data.

The ProMax^TM database is a growing repository for 3-dimensional protein structures. These structures accelerate drug discovery and optimization by providing high-quality 3-D structures of proteins for which no X-ray crystal structures are available. The protein families contained in the database include proteins believed to be associated with major diseases including asthma, cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases, and bacterial and viral infection.

The ProMax^TM drug-target database is offered on a non-exclusive subscription basis for an annual fee. Since the database can be broadly applied across all research disciplines within the life sciences industry, SBI meets the individual needs of its subscribers by offering multi-tiered access to the database, e.g., view-only access; view access with ability to download structures; and enterprise-wide access with full download capability.

About Structural Bioinformatics, Inc.

SBI 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 3-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 and research facilities in San Diego, CA; Cambridge, MA; Washington, DC; and Hørsholm, Denmark. Additional company information can be found on the Internet at: http://www.strubix.com.