Amersham Pharmacia Biotech to Host the Annual Rutgers University Waksman Student Scholars Program Poster Session and Awards Ceremony.

Business, Medical & Education Editors

PISCATAWAY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 5, 2001

Students from 17 New Jersey Schools to

Present DNA Sequencing Results in a Poster Forum

Amersham Pharmacia Biotech today will host a poster session and awards ceremony for 17 New Jersey high schools participating in the Rutgers University Waksman Student Scholar Program.

Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources, the Waksman Student Scholars Program is designed to help high school students learn about various scientific disciplines. Amersham Pharmacia Biotech has supported the program since 1998 by providing laboratory reagents and equipment, student scholarship support, and the time of their scientists and staff.

During the course of the past academic year, students involved with the Student Scholar Program have been investigating the genetic differences between humans and the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans). They will present their findings in this poster forum. Awards will be given for best posters, as well for the winner of The Waksman Challenge, a bioinformatics research problem that students had the opportunity to attempt to answer using databases and software resources of the Internet.

"The best part about this program is being able to work with schools in our local community," said Geoffrey Smith, Technical Support Director at Amersham Pharmacia Biotech. "We are proud to be a sponsor of The Waksman Student Scholars Program, which teaches students laboratory techniques and concepts that most students won't see until their junior or senior year of College."

"The students in this program are learning science by doing science," Dr. William H. Sofer, Project Co-Director, Waksman Student Scholars Program, and Professor, Department of Genetics, Rutgers University. "We appreciate the support of Amersham Pharmacia Biotech to help the program achieve its goals. Students in the program are developing critical thinking skills, while learning about molecular biology and genetic engineering."

The Waksman Institute of Microbiology's mission is to conduct research in molecular genetics and structural and computational biology. Located on Rutgers University's Busch campus in Piscataway, N.J., it is named after the late Selman Waksman, a former Rutgers professor and graduate who won the Nobel Prize in 1952 for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources, the Student Scholars Program is designed to help high school students learn about various scientific disciplines including experimental design, research methods, laboratory procedures, data collection and analysis, and scientific reporting.

Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, the life sciences business of Nycomed Amersham plc (LSE: NAM; NYSE:NYE), is a leading provider of biotechnology systems, products and services for research into genes and proteins, for the discovery and development of drugs and for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals. The customers for Amersham Pharmacia Biotech's products and technology are pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and research and academic institutions, principally in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.