ChiRex opens $13.5 million research & development center and Pilot Plant; For cGMP pharmaceutical fine chemical development.

DUDLEY, UK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 1, 1996--ChiRex Inc. $13.5 million investment in the future at its Dudley, Northumberland site was marked today when the Pilot Plant and Development Laboratories were officially opened by Mr. Andrew Neil, formerly Editor of the Sunday Times (UK), businessman and political commentator.

Also participating in the opening ceremonies were representatives from 20 different international pharmaceutical companies, members of ChiRex's scientific advisory board, and local government officials.

The $10.7 million Pilot Plant is designed to allow ChiRex to respond rapidly to customer demand for developmental quantities of pharmaceutical fine chemicals manufactured in accord with cGMP (current good manufacturing practice). The design assures products manufactured to the most exacting safety and quality standards expected from a company which has built up, over 30 years, an international reputation as a producer of bulk chemicals for pharmaceutical and agricultural products.

Flexibility has been built in to the design to allow ChiRex to respond to customer needs by maximizing the use of equipment with minimum downtime between products. Included in the pilot plant are special facilities for handling and processing cytotoxic drugs and substances which require total isolation.

The new R&D Center will be used by ChiRex scientists for the further development of its advanced chiral chemical technologies and for fine chemical process development and scale up activities. With its exclusive patent rights to technologies to produce single-isomer chiral intermediates and bulk active drugs with high enantiomeric purity at reasonable cost, ChiRex is well positioned to become a leading player in this rapidly growing market.

ChiRex is increasing its team of research and development chemists by over 25 percent to exploit its patented technologies: asymmetric dihyroxylation, asymmetric epoxidation and reduction together with ensymatic bio-resolutions. In addition to its focus in chiral chemistry, ChiRex has established an expertise in a wide range of complex chemical syntheses and manufacturing know-how for safe and cost effective scale up of fine chemicals.

The center houses the Hazard Evaluation Group which has built up an international reputation for work on the thermo-kinetics of reactions and the application of this to the safe design of production processes.

Alan Clark, president and chief operating officer of ChiRex Inc., said, "Making the best use of our skills in innovative new process development is critical to achieving our target of increasing our turnover by half in 3 years. The Development Center provides the foundation we need to respond rapidly to our customer requirements. With wide range of patents in chiral intermediate production, I see ChiRex becoming a leading player in this expanding market."

ChiRex Inc. manufactures and sells pharmaceutical fine chemicals. With some 50 patents and patent applications in the field of chiral technology, ChiRex is an international recognized leader in the technologies for the production of single-isomer fine chemicals. Over 50 different fine chemical drug products are manufactured at its Dudley, UK facilities and, through its joint venture company, InNova Pharmaceuticals, ChiRex also manufactures and sells formulated generic drugs. InNova's first product is paclitaxel, useful in the treatment of ovarian and breast cancer. -0-

Note: Chiral Chemicals -- the molecules of complex chemicals, such as pharmaceuticals -- often exist as mixtures of three dimensional mirror-image forms called chiral isomers. The different isomers, while chemically identical are three dimensionally different.

However, with pharmaceutical products these different forms of the chemical can have different biological effects in the body. It is often the case that only one isomer produces the desired therapeutic effect with the other (or others) having no beneficial effect. In this case the inert isomer(s) effectively represents a waste of an expensive chemical. Sometimes the unwanted isomer can actually produce an unwanted biological response in the body, that is an undesirable side effect.

Where this phenomenon exists there is an increasing trend within the pharmaceutical industry to develop single-isomer forms of new products for both cost and drug safety reasons.

CONTACT: ChiRex Inc.

Robert L. Bratzler, Ph.D.

or

Michael A. Griffith

617/431-2200