January 10, 2001

AnVil Informatics, Inc., Receives First Round Investment Commitment of $3.5 Million from Three Leading Venture Capital Funds

Lowell, MA

AnVil Informatics, Inc., announced today that it has completed its first round of venture capital financing with three leading venture capital firms: Seaflower Ventures, Mason Wells Biomedical Fund, and Applied Genomic Technology Capital Funds. This investment will be used to expand AnVil's business management team and technical staff as well as to accelerate the development of its software tools and to enhance its data discovery and exploration platform. The expanded staff and enhanced data exploration software will enable the company to meet the rapidly growing demand for AnVil's data mining, analysis and visualization services and software.

AnVil Informatics is a data exploration company providing professional services and software for data mining, analysis and visualization to leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and genomics companies. AnVil was organized in 1999 and incorporated in March of 2000. AnVil's technology was developed over a seven-year period by Dr. Georges Grinstein, Dr. Patrick Hoffman, and Dr. Kenneth Marx, while at the University of Massachusetts/Lowell. AnVil is located in Lowell, part of the greater Boston area and adjoins the University of Massachusetts/Lowell campus. Boston is considered the center for research and development in biotechnology and is at present the location of over 400 biotech and genomics companies, making it an attractive market for AnVil's products and services.

"It has been an affirmation of AnVil's business model to have three significant investors commit funds to further our growth." said Dr. Michael J. McManus, President & COO of AnVil. "Our business model has also been confirmed by our initial achievements in fiscal year 2000. AnVil successfully completed four data exploration projects on genomics and SAR (Structure Activity Relationship) datasets. Our techniques for high dimensional analysis enable us to explore our customers' data and find important new relationships between seemingly unrelated variables in the large volume of information accumulated during genomics research and the drug discovery process. It is a truly exciting time to work in the bioinformatics field and be part of the genomics revolution."

"We believe AnVil is ideally positioned to provide a valuable source of needed bioinformatics and data mining expertise to the biotech and genomics companies in the Boston area." said Jim Sherblom, President and founder of Seaflower Ventures. "We feel AnVil's experienced founding management team and data exploration technology make it an excellent investment opportunity.

As a result of this funding, AnVil Informatics is expanding its board of directors to seven members, three of whom represent investors. The board consists of Frank Hurley, Ph.D., Chairman, co-founder of Biometric Research Institute (later known as BRI International), where he held a position of Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer until BRI's merger with Quintiles Transnational Corporation. He served as Quintiles Chief Scientific Officer and is currently holding a position of Senior Scientist; Howard Berke the founding CEO of AnVil, and founder/cofounder of eight start-up technology oriented companies; Michael J. McManus (President & COO), former Vice President, Marketing of CambridgeSoft, a commercial life sciences software and e-commerce company; and Alan Green, M.D., Ph.D., JD, a physician, lawyer and research scientist who holds an advising role at the prestigious law firm of Mintz, Levin. He was formerly the Medical Director at New England Nuclear/DuPont Medical Products.

With the new investments, the following people join the board: James Sherblom of Seaflower Ventures, who helped grow Genzyme Corp. into one of the largest public biotech firms in the U.S.; Trevor D'Souza of Mason Wells, who played a key role on several large contracts at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and leading pharmaceutical companies; and David Stone of AGTC Funds, who was a Managing Director at Cowen & Company, now SG Cowen Securities.

About AnVil Informatics:

AnVil Informatics, Inc., is a data exploration company. Incorporated in March of 2000, 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 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 professional services and software offerings, visit our web site at http://www.anvilinformatics.com.

About Seaflower Ventures:

Seaflower Ventures invests in promising, early-stage biomedical firms and considers seed and first-round investments in companies in most segments of the biomedical industry, including biotechnology, medical devices, healthcare information technology, and healthcare services. Seaflower currently manages three funds: The Seaflower Health & Technology Fund, L.L.C., a $5 million seed venture capital fund; the Seaflower BioVenture Fund II, L.L.C., a $10 million venture fund; and the J&L Sherblom Fund, L.L.C., a focused equity fund. Typical investments range from $250,000 to $1,250,000 for promising opportunities.

To learn more about Seaflower Ventures, and review its portfolio of companies, visit their website at http://www.seaflower.com.

About Mason Wells:

Mason Wells began in 1982 as the merchant banking arm of the Marshall & Ilsley Corporation, the oldest existing bank operating in the Great Lakes Region with its origin dating to 1847. In 1998 Mason Wells was created as an independent management company to raise its first independent fund with capital provided by over twenty Midwest institutional investors and business partners. Mason Wells is currently managing over $350 million of investments in a wide range of companies in the biomedical and information technology fields.

To learn more about Mason Wells, visit their website at http://www.masonwells.com.

About AGTC Funds:

Applied Genomic Technology Capital Funds is a specialty venture capital group focused on investment opportunities enabled by the genomic revolution. AGTC Funds invests in private companies that apply genomic information and technologies to develop products or services that create significant shareholder value. Formed by NewcoGen Group, in partnership with OneLiberty Ventures, AGTC Funds' limited partners include both institutional investors and corporations with a strategic interest in genomics, including Affymetrix, Antigenics, Compaq Computer Corporation and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. As the first specialty fund focused on this sector, AGTC expects to play a leadership role in selecting, funding and developing new genomics application companies.

To learn more about AGTC fund, visit their website at http://www.agtcfunds.com.