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November 12, 2002

AnVil Acquires ActiveCyte Life Sciences Intellectual Property

Life sciences pioneer buys drug discovery 'taxonomy' to aid development of new R&D approaches for pharmas, biotechs and healthcare providers

Burlington, MA - November 12, 2002 - As part of its ongoing expansion of services and technologies, life sciences discovery pioneer AnVil, Inc. today announced that it has acquired a key intellectual property component of now-defunct knowledge management firm ActiveCyte. For undisclosed terms, AnVil licensed the complete and comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy of therapeutic areas and mechanisms of drug actions from ActiveCyte Holdings, Inc. This taxonomy will be used as part of AnVil's drug discovery platform.

The taxonomy, developed in partnership with scientists from several large pharmaceutical companies and from dozens of academic research centers, was created to empower researchers in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and clinical research organizations (CROs). This compendium of intellectual property includes valuable information that can be applied to drug discovery for the treatment of a wide range of disease areas.

AnVil will integrate ActiveCyte's taxonomy into its own analytical and visualization technology platform, which it uses to explore datasets in a variety of disease and treatment areas.

Dr. Michael J. McManus, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of AnVil, said, "Our acquisition of ActiveCyte's intellectual property gives AnVil an excellent resource for developing more advanced services and technologies, all aimed at providing pharmaceutical, biotechnology and CRO clients with valuable and unique new ways to extract knowledge from large heterogeneous data sets."

Dr. Richard Gill, AnVil President and CEO, explained, "The key value of this well-crafted and mature IP is that it is a powerful framework for developing technologies which can advance drug discovery pipelines. It provides a powerful tool for our own and our clients' efforts in research and development."

About AnVil
AnVil is a pioneering life sciences discovery company that turns data into knowledge. AnVil partners with life sciences, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthcare companies, enabling them to see and interpret multiple data sets in integrated, information-rich views. This approach turns data into decision-quality information, generating informed decisions faster and more accurately. AnVil's combination of scientific perspective, expertise and high-dimensional technology uncovers the limitless possibilities within complex data sets.

Copyright © 2002 AnVil, Inc. All rights reserved.

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