Paris, France (January 20th, 2003) - AUREUS PHARMA, a leading knowledge management-based drug discovery company and a solution provider for the Life Sciences industry, announces today that it has entered into a multi-years agreement with Roche giving access to its chemical biology database on G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) as well as licensing its AUR-QUEST® access software. This integrated Knowledge-Management system gives subscribers access to information on all major GPCRs already described, allowing to identify, validate and prioritize in parallel new targets and ligands for drug discovery. GPCRs act as receptors for many pharmaceuticals, as well as most of preclinical drug candidates.

Roche researchers from the Basel Research Center will be able to exploit all GPCR-related information from a single, integrated knowledge-management-based platform. An option has also been offered to Roche to extend the licenses to other research centers.

About AUREUS PHARMA

AUREUS PHARMA, headquartered in Paris, France, is a privately held leading knowledge managementbased drug discovery company and a solution provider for the life sciences industry, founded in 2000. AUREUS PHARMA proposes a novel solution thanks to an integrated set of technologies, combining computerized knowledge management systems with experimental methods in order to accelerate new drug discovery. This mission fits with the need to innovate in therapeutic target identification and to discover safer and more specific drugs developing proprietary strategies based on “Chemogenomics” concepts.