ChemRx and Pharmacia and Upjohn Sign Chemistry Collaboration Agreement.

SAN DIEGO--(BW HealthWire)--Oct. 11, 1999--

ChemRx, a wholly owned subsidiary of Discovery Partners International, today announced it has signed a chemistry-based research agreement with Pharmacia and Upjohn.

Under the terms of agreement, ChemRx will develop multiple classes of compounds for Pharmacia and Upjohn's drug discovery and lead optimization libraries. ChemRx will develop the chemistries on a fee-for-service basis, and will provide the compounds to Pharmacia and Upjohn on an exclusive basis and with no milestone or royalty obligations, for screening in a wide range of P&U's internal assays.

"Our strong synthesis and medicinal chemistry expertise, key components of our strategy, coupled with the business model for providing royalty free chemistry-based drug discovery services, initiated the discussions with Pharmacia and Upjohn," according to Aubrey Mendonca, Director of Marketing at ChemRx. "Pharmacia and Upjohn provided us with the lead structures of the compounds they were interested in synthesizing, and the size of each of the libraries. Working closely with their medicinal chemistry group, the diversity of compound libraries was then decided on. We then efficiently developed the protocols and compound libraries to meet their library expansion objectives."

ChemRx scientists use the combinatorial chemistry tools developed by their sister company, IRORI, to rapidly convert synthesis methods into chemical libraries for pharmaceutical lead discovery or for optimization of new drug leads.

ChemRx (a Discovery Partners International company) is a chemistry services company that leverages the internal medicinal chemistry resources of its pharmaceutical partners by providing primary lead-discovery chemical libraries and lead-optimization services for drug discovery and development. It provides its partners with lead discovery libraries (25,000 + compounds) and focused libraries (1,000 - 10,000 compounds) on a fee-for-service basis, with all rights to the compounds assigned to its partners. The Company also provides lead optimization and scale-up services on a cost-plus basis as its partners discover new drug leads from the compound libraries it generates.

Discovery Partners International is an umbrella company focused on providing the best platforms, services and information available to augment the internal drug discovery efforts of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. Subsidiaries include IRORI, a combinatorial chemistry instrument company, ChemRx, a provider of chemistry services and Discovery Technologies Ltd., a high throughput screening company in Basel, Switzerland. The company is headquartered in San Diego.