Waltham, MA, 2002/10/15

Genedata USA, announced today that it has entered into a licensing agreement with the pharmaceutical research arm of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) to use Genedata Phylosopher, its comprehensive system for comparative functional genomics. The agreement with Wyeth Research underscores Genedata's ongoing commitment to provide comprehensive bioinformatics software and scientific consulting for a broad spectrum of life science applications – from pharma and agro to biotech.

Under the terms of the agreement, Wyeth will use Genedata Phylosopher to analyze the genomes of pharmaceutically relevant pathogens by comparing them with all the currently available and completely sequenced genomes from microbial and higher organisms, including genome sequences proprietary to Wyeth. The thorough integration of Wyeth's proprietary genomes will open up possibilities for the classification and functional annotation of previously uncharacterized genes and proteins, allowing the identification of new targets for anti-infective development.

"We look forward to working with Wyeth Research in their anti-infective drug discovery effort by providing our enterprise software as well as the highest level of scientific consulting and support," said Genedata USA's President, Andrew DePristo, Ph.D. "In this disease area, the Genedata Phylosopher comparative genomics system has been especially effective due to the availability of the complete genome sequences of a large number of pathogenic bacteria. Phylosopher's innovative approach can also be applied to the functional analysis of fungal, plant, animal and human genomes, and I expect such efforts to increase rapidly with the recent completion of the sequencing of a number of higher eukaryotic genomes."

Genedata Phylosopher represents the first fully integrated enterprise solution for large-scale genome comparisons that enables the comprehensive and combined analysis of genome sequence, expression, functional, and phenotypic data. It is designed to support major steps of the drug discovery process ranging from target identification and target validation to assay development. The system can also be used for mechanism-of-action studies via integration of mRNA expression data onto a genomic background, identification of specific pathogenicity factors, and evaluation and assessment of drug leads.