ROCHE PALO ALTO SELECTS CHEMDEX TO PROVIDE
SCIENTIFIC PROCUREMENT SERVICES

Palo Alto, Calif. - May 7, 1999 /PR Newswire/ - Chemdex™ Corporation, the leading provider of electronic commerce solutions for laboratory supply, today announced that Roche Palo Alto has signed a contract with Chemdex to provide integrated scientific procurement services.

Roche Palo Alto is focused on the discovery and early clinical development of new medicines to treat diseases and conditions including arthritis, asthma and other respiratory diseases, osteoporosis, transplantation rejection, pain and lower urinary tract disorders.

With Chemdex, Roche Palo Alto researchers, scientists and lab technicians will ultimately be able to search for, compare and purchase scientific supplies in the Chemdex Marketplace via the Roche Palo Alto intranet. Chemdex will also provide customization to match existing business processes at Roche Palo Alto, including electronic requisition routing and approval, accounting and reporting requirements, account codes and reporting capabilities.

"Roche Palo Alto selected Chemdex because of the comprehensive method of procurement services it offers," said David Wilson, manager, Purchasing Services, Roche Palo Alto. "Chemdex will provide our scientists with products they need, in addition to the custom procurement features our purchasing department requires. This agreement will help us further streamline our procurement process and allow us to focus on what’s truly important to our business: drug discovery and development."

"By selecting Chemdex, Roche Palo Alto has taken an important step forward toward making its scientific procurement process more efficient," said David Perry, president, CEO and co-founder of Chemdex. "We are delighted to work with Roche Palo Alto and we are looking forward to providing it with a procurement solution to support its goal of reduced time to market for innovative therapeutic products."

The Chemdex Marketplace (www.chemdex.com) provides scientists and purchasing professionals with the ability to search for and order scientific supplies from a single online catalog of products from suppliers they already know. Chemdex.com features a number of smart tools to facilitate online ordering such as a highly specialized scientific search engine, the ability to consolidate orders for multiple suppliers onto one form, and a favorites list to keep track of commonly ordered products.

The Chemdex procurement solution provides significant added value to the Chemdex Marketplace product including custom pricing and catalogs, the ability to route and approve requisitions electronically, account codes, summary billing and reporting capabilities. The Chemdex procurement solution simplifies order routing, eliminates maverick purchasing and reduces purchasing costs for the buying organization, yet gives scientists the products they need to do their research.

About Chemdex
Chemdex Corporation (www.chemdex.com) is the leading provider of electronic commerce solutions in the laboratory supply market, uniting buyers and suppliers in a single Web marketplace. With contracts to offer more than 400,000 products from over 160 leading suppliers, Chemdex provides the single product source for scientists and purchasing agents. In addition, the company’s custom procurement solutions support purchase order approval and contract pricing for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities and government research labs.

Chemdex actively promotes and contributes to the development of e-commerce standards such as OBI, XML and XML/EDI to enable efficient purchasing solutions for all customer and supplier segments. Founded in September 1997, the company has assembled a world-class management team consisting of scientists, life science supply executives and Internet pioneers. Chemdex is funded by leading investment partners including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, E.M. Warburg Pincus, CMG @Ventures, Bay City Capital, Galen Partners, and J&J/H&Q health.net.

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

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