ORIGINUS SELECTS CHEMNAVIGATOR TO PROVIDE SCREENING LIBRARY DESIGN AND CHEMISTRY PROCUREMENT SERVICES

San Diego, CA - ChemNavigator, a cheminformatics company, announced today that its proprietary iResearch™ System will be employed to design a diverse, custom screening library of drug-like compounds for Originus, Inc., a drug discovery and research company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition to designing the library, ChemNavigator's Chemistry Procurement Service will locate, normalize and coordinate the delivery of the selected compounds from its global network of more than 35 suppliers.

"We chose ChemNavigator for this project because their cheminformatics technology is flexible enough to address our individual needs and they can deliver the compounds we require," said Alfred Mansour, president and CEO of Originus. "ChemNavigator provides us with access to a broad range of chemistry and an unbiased selection of compounds, along with procurement services that will greatly simplify the compound acquisition process."

Under the terms of the agreement, ChemNavigator will receive library design and procurement fees for its work. The therapeutic area of research and financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

ChemNavigator will use the iResearch System's structure-based search engine, the fastest in the industry, and proprietary chemistry diversity tools to comb through the 2.3 million drug-like compounds in its library and identify those compounds that meet Originus' business and chemistry criteria.

"Originus is working on some truly exciting research and we are pleased they selected ChemNavigator to help them with this critical project," said Scott Hutton, president and CEO of ChemNavigator. "We hope this library will enhance Originus' drug discovery efforts by speeding up their research and simplifying the compound selection and purchase process." ChemNavigator's proprietary iResearch System has grown from its Web-based procurement roots into a powerful search and comparison system that allows users to create a chemistry space, based on business and chemistry rules, that is specific to a project. The iResearch System is a new class of cheminformatics system that provides drug discovery researchers quick and efficient access to a constantly updated database of commercially accessible pharmaceutical research samples from worldwide sources. In addition, the iResearch System automatically alerts scientists to important information on structurally related chemical records from toxicology, patent, and biological activity databases.

About ChemNavigator, Inc.
ChemNavigator is bringing order to the world of chemical information through its powerful cheminformatics technology. The company's proprietary iResearch™ System is the fastest and most comprehensive chemical-structure-based search and comparison system in the world. ChemNavigator also aggregates and manages more than two million chemical-structure records through its iResearch System Library of commercially accessible compounds, and its ChemGuide™ databases of scientific information.

About Originus, Inc.
Originus (www.originusinc.com) is a development stage drug research and discovery organization established to respond to the enormous opportunity that has been created by the completion of the sequencing of the human genome. Originus' mission is to revolutionize the discovery and development of pharmaceutical solutions to unmet medical needs by combining uniquely efficient, functional genomics and proteomics technologies with advanced cell biology techniques.