Agencourt and Integrated Genomics Announce Strategic Partnership

CHICAGO, IL and Beverly, MA - August 20, 2003

Agencourt Bioscience Corporation, a provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products to the life sciences industry, today announced the formation of a strategic marketing alliance with Integrated Genomics, Inc.

Under the terms of the agreement, Agencourt and Integrated Genomics will co-market the most comprehensive suite of library construction, high quality sequencing and bioinformatics services in the industry. Agencourt will provide customers with library construction and high throughput sequencing through its Discovery Solutions' suite of genomic services. Leveraging its ERGO™ bioinformatics package, Integrated Genomics will greatly expand Agencourt's existing genome assembly capabilities with proprietary downstream genetic analysis software, bioinformatics services and a comprehensive genome database.

"We are extremely excited about this partnership and what it brings to our customers. The bioinformatics expertise and services that Integrated Genomics has developed will give our genomic services customers access to extremely powerful annotation tools and an advanced and a truly comprehensive genomics database. This will allow our customers to make better use of the sequence data we generate by identifying previously unknown or mischaracterized genes, assigning functions to genes and integrating genes into pathways," said, R. Brian McKernan, President and Chief Executive Officer at Agencourt.

"Agencourt is one of the premier sequencing centers in the world. Their high throughput and high quality service offerings make them an ideal complement to Integrated Genomics' bioinformatics and genome analysis capabilities. Our combined resources will provide a single platform for complete sequencing and bioinformatics services. The team at Integrated Genomics welcomes working with Agencourt's team in this field of high-throughput biology," said Roelf Datema, Chief Executive Officer at Integrated Genomics.

About Integrated Genomics

Integrated Genomics, Inc., based in Chicago, Illinois, is a leading genomics company, specialized in microbial genomics. Integrated's systematic approach to genomics is based on advanced methods of comparative genome analysis, functional reconstructions, and metabolic modeling derived from our high quality, manually annotated metabolic networks. Over the years IG has developed the most advanced and comprehensive bioinformatics suite (ERGO™) for genomics, harboring over 600 genomes of which 400 are curated microbial genomes. ERGO™ can combine gene essentiality, proteomics and micro-array data with pathway reconstructions (over 6,000 pathways), enabling strain development, drug discovery and metabolic engineering. IG has worked successfully with the food, biotech, and chemical and pharmaceutical industry.

About Agencourt Bioscience Corporation

Agencourt Bioscience Corporation is a provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products that help biotech and pharmaceutical companies improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their drug development pipelines. Agencourt's Discovery Solutions' suite of genomic and functional genomic services includes high-throughput sequencing, SAGE sequencing, library construction and SNP discovery. The company's purification products and services are based on the proven and patented Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization (SPRI) technology, which has been adopted by several of the largest genome research facilities, resulting in more base pairs contributed to GenBank than any other nucleic acid purification technology and used to sequence over one-third of the human genome. Agencourt has been confirmed to be operating in compliance with the requirements of the Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) as a contract analytical laboratory. Several of Agencourt's founders worked at the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, and have significant experience in combining the chemistries and instrumentation for high-throughput genomics. Agencourt is located in Beverly, Massachusetts.