Contact: PolyGenyx, Inc.
Dr. Christopher Simmons
President & CEO
(508) 459-6120
E-mail: csimmons@polygenyx.com

August 29, 2000

AnVil and PolyGenyx Announce Collaboration on Bioinformatics Effort

Lowell, MA -- AnVil Informatics, Inc., a data exploration company, today announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with PolyGenyx, Inc. Under the agreement, AnVil and PolyGenyx will work jointly on bioinformatics projects related to PolyGenyx's SNP genotyping and haplotyping programs. Initially, AnVil will build a database suitable of hosting the large amount of data originating from PolyGenyx's laboratory in Worcester, MA. The two companies are also in discussion for a longer-term collaboration on data exploration projects.

"Both AnVil and PolyGenyx have complementary technical expertise. AnVil's expertise is in data analysis and visualization of genomics data and PolyGenyx's expertise is in the generation and interpretation of large volumes of SNP-based genomics data," said Dr. Michael J. McManus, AnVil's President and COO. "We are very excited to be collaborating with PolyGenyx because together we can build a more comprehensive and functional solution."

"PolyGenyx is in the process of establishing a proprietary technology platform for very high throughput, low cost SNP genotype and haplotype analysis. Bioinformatics is an important integral part of this process," commented Dr. Chris Simmons, President and CEO of PolyGenyx. "The collaboration with AnVil complements our own bioinformatics capabilities, so that we are better equipped with the tools and know-how to ensure the bioinformatics part of the system will be truly capable of handling the large amount of data generated by our high throughput programs."

Founded in 1999, AnVil Informatics, Inc. provides data mining, analysis, and visualization services to the leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. AnVil's combination of unique, internally developed software and commercial tools allows for the exploration of complex, large and high dimensional datasets. In addition, AnVil's technical experts harness different properties of human perception such as color, texture and shape in the process of visualizing various attributes of the complex data. The resulting visualizations make conclusions more evident earlier in the decision making process and can greatly enhance every step of the client's decision making-helping them to make informed decisions faster and more accurately.

To learn more about AnVil's capabilities and offerings, visit the web site at www.anvilinformatics.com

PolyGenyx's high throughput OmniScan, SNPScan and HaploScan technologies enable low cost SNP genotyping and haplotyping of large populations. PolyGenyx will begin offering services to pharmaceutical and agricultural customers later this year by which time it expects to have an initial capability of 50,000 genome-wide scans or 50 million genotypes/year. PolyGenyx's novel microarray/hybridization based technologies offer the lowest cost option for complex disease linkage analysis, pharmacogenomics, DNA-profiling and marker-assisted selection.

To learn more about PolyGenyx's capabilities and offerings, visit the web site at www.polygenyx.com