ALANEX AND ROCHE BIOSCIENCE FORM COLLABORATION

San Diego, Calif./Palo Alto, Calif. -- July 17, 1996 -- Alanex Corporation and Roche Bioscience today announced formation of a three- year collaboration to discover novel small molecule drugs in the area of pain.

Alanex will apply its integrated combinatorial chemistry technology to a Roche Bioscience molecular target with the goal to accelerate the discovery of orally bioavailable drugs. Roche Bioscience has a 90-day option to add a second molecular target for pain and/or lower urinary tract disorders to the collaboration.

According to the agreement, Alanex will be responsible for the screening of its highly diverse combinatorial libraries and optimization of resulting leads into drug candidates identified in the collaboration. Roche Bioscience will be responsible for preclinical and clinical development of drug candidates identified in the collaboration.

Roche Bioscience will pay an initiation fee, provide research funding, and make milestone payments in return for worldwide exclusive marketing and manufacturing rights for compounds arising from the collaboration. Alanex will receive royalties on sales of products resulting from the collaboration.

"This collaboration represents an ideal application for Alanex's drug discovery technology to discover novel drug candidates," said Marvin Brown, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Alanex. "Roche Bioscience is a recognized leader in the therapeutic areas that form the basis of the collaboration. I believe that the complementary styles and capabilities of Roche Bioscience and Alanex provide the essential ingredients for a productive drug discovery program."

"Alanex's expertise in combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening will allow us to leverage novel targets identified at Roche Bioscience," said Roger Whiting, Ph.D., head of the Roche Bioscience Neurobiology Business Unit.

"The agreement with Roche Bioscience represents the second major collaboration for Alanex within the last nine months," said Ed Baracchini, Ph.D., the director of Business Development and Strategic Planning at Alanex. "During the past two years Alanex has focused its efforts in developing our integrated combinatorial chemistry technology and successfully implementing it in our partnered and internal discovery programs."

Alanex Corporation, based in San Diego, is a privately held drug discovery company whose mission is to identify small molecule drugs using its proprietary drug discovery technologies. Alanex has developed and integrated its combinatorial chemistry with computational chemistry, high throughput screening and medical chemistry. In December 1994, Alanex formed a strategic collaboration with Astra Pharma Inc. to discover and develop drugs for a novel opioid receptor. In April 1996, Alanex announced the signing of a collaboration with Novo Nordisk related to the discovery and development of small molecules for the treatment of diabetes.

Located in Palo Alto, Calif., Roche Bioscience is a research-based, product focused organization dedicated to the discovery and early clinical development of innovative prescription drugs. Roche Bioscience is a member of the Roche Group, which has headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

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