PANGEA SYSTEMS AND ROCHE BIOSCIENCE COMPLETE
DNA CHIP DESIGN STUDY

A Unique Approach to Database Mining Provides Automated,
Cost-Effective Chip Design for Gene Families

OAKLAND, Calif., April 29, 1998 -- Pangea SystemsÒ , Inc. today announced it has completed a collaboration with Roche Bioscience for the design of expression chips from expressed sequenced tagged (EST) databases. This scientifically validated system, which uses bioinformatics tools from Pangea's GeneWorld®, has successfully completed its milestones. The collaboration allowed the efficient design of DNA chips for gene families of therapeutic and diagnostic interest.

"With the help of Pangea's chip design software, we are able to detect previously unknown gene family members," said Robert Booth, Ph.D., senior vice president and head of the Roche Bioscience Inflammatory Diseases Unit.

"The collaboration between Pangea and Roche Bioscience further demonstrates the benefit of bringing information technology and biological research together&emdash; to develop diagnostics and cures for diseases in less time," said John Couch, CEO of Pangea Systems, Inc.

Pangea's proprietary informatics capabilities and the bioinformatics experience of its staff have been combined with Roche Bioscience's knowledge in specific therapeutic areas, in-house informatics expertise, and rich data repositories. This collaboration verified that Pangea's chip design software is accurate and rapid; in a single day the system can characterize entire gene families by sifting through millions of ESTs.

One component of Pangea's new software automatically segregates and classifies gene isoforms and polymorphisms that may be linked to disease, so that chip designs are complete and of the highest quality. Other specialized components of the system provide validation and protection from artifacts, such as chimerism and contamination inherent in EST data. The combined system allows the construction of chip design sets from incomplete, fragmented, and error-prone EST data and full-length sequences from both public and proprietary databases.

Roche Bioscience
Located in Palo Alto, Calif., Roche Bioscience is a research-based, business-oriented enterprise dedicated to the discovery and accelerated early clinical development of innovative prescription drugs. Roche Bioscience is a member of the Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. The Roche Bioscience website is available at www.roche.com/bioscience.

Pangea Systems
Pangea Systems, Inc. is a leader in bioinformatics -- the application of information technology to biological research. Pangea Systems' sophisticated, intuitive software applications enhance the ability of pharmaceutical and biotech companies to discover the molecular mechanism of disease. These applications integrate data with analysis and visualization tools for biological and chemical information, effectively simplifying and accelerating the drug discovery process. Customers selecting Pangea's software solutions are able to transform raw data into valuable information allowing scientists to focus on biology instead of computer science.

The Company's software applications leverage life science knowledge and employ industrial-strength relational database management systems, a distributed, open environment and Java-enabled, web-based technologies.

Pangea Systems, Inc. is a privately held, Oakland, California-based company. For more information, contact Pangea Systems, Inc. at 510/628-0100 or e-mail us at info-pr@pangeasystems.com or visit our website at http://www.pangeasystems.com.

###

 Copyright 1998, Pangea Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Pangea Systems and GeneWorld are registered trademarks of Pangea Systems, Inc. GeneMill and GeneThesaurus are trademarks of Pangea Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks, brands and names are property of their respective owners.