FAMILYGENETIX REALIGNS PRODUCT OFFERINGS.

NetGenics, Inc. has acquired ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony informatics software programs from FamilyGenetix Ltd, formerly known as Cherwell Scientific Ltd., for $1 million. The acquisition enhances NetGenics' global capabilities in the cheminformatics and bioinformatics markets, while enabling FamilyGenetix to realign its product offerings to meet the needs of the healthcare and genetics communities.

"The additions of ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony will allow us to extend our component-based solutions approach to include cheminformatics," stated NetGenics CEO and president, Manuel J. Glynias. "We believe this acquisition will better equip us to help our customers identify new targets and compounds, especially where data needs to be managed across biological and chemical domains." "The sale of ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony to NetGenics allows FamilyGenetix to focus on those areas that add the greatest value to our customers across the healthcare and genetics communities," said Tom Girn, CEO of FamilyGenetix. "We are confident that NetGenics will provide the level of support expected by existing ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony customers, as well as the technical expertise required for the continued development of these programs."

Along with the purchase of ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony, NetGenics hired the key members of FamilyGenetix's staff associated with the two programs. This team will operate as part of NetGenics' U.K. operation and will continue to support existing ChemSymphony and MetaSymphony customers.

ChemSymphony is a collection of more than 40 Java Bean components used for the creation of Web-based applications that locate, visualize in 2D and 3D, annotate and save chemical structures. ChemSymphony was originally released in 1996 and has an established market base at pharmaceutical companies in Europe, and the U.S. Version 1.2.2 was released in June 2000.

MetaSymphony is a client-based Java data browsing application that permits scientists to explore the relationship between heterogeneous kinds of data stored in disparate data pools. MetaSymphony is currently in use at a leading pharmaceutical company to discover the relationship between molecular properties and biological activities. MetaSymphony comes with a Daylight(tm)-aware data adaptor. MetaSymphony 1.0 was released in May 2000.

FamilyGenetix Ltd develops and markets software products and web-based services for healthcare organizations and researchers in genetics and the biomedical sciences. Its customers include leading healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotech companies and its software is used in many major universities around the world. FamilyGenetix Ltd is based in Oxford, England.

NetGenics, Inc., is a privately held company that builds integrated informatics solutions for the life science market. The company's solutions leverage a combination of NetGenics' proprietary software components, open-architecture framework technology, and consulting, support and custom integration services. NetGenics was established in 1996 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.

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