Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. Announces Avinza Conference Call; Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 8:30 a.m. ET

Business Wire, March 20, 2002

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2002

Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:LGND), will hold a conference call to discuss Avinza(TM) (formerly Morphelan(TM)) on Thursday, March 21, 2002, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time (5:30 a.m. Pacific Time).

This call is being web cast by CCBN and can be accessed at Ligand's web site at www.ligand.com.

The web cast is also being distributed over CCBN's Investor Distribution Network to both institutional and individual investors. Individual investors can listen to the call through CCBN's individual investor center at www.companyboardroom.com or by visiting any of the investor sites in CCBN's Individual Investor Network such as America Online's Personal Finance Channel, Fidelity Investments(R) (Fidelity.com) and others. Institutional investors can access the call via CCBN's password-protected event management site, StreetEvents (www.streetevents.com). StreetEvents allows institutional investors to identify, organize, and track the hundreds of conference calls that occur each day during earnings season, to download events of interest to their Outlook calendar, and to RSVP to events online.

About Ligand

Ligand discovers, develops and markets new drugs that address critical unmet medical needs of patients in the areas of cancer, skin diseases, men's and women's hormone-related diseases, osteoporosis, metabolic disorders, and cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases. Ligand's proprietary drug discovery and development programs are based on its leadership position in gene transcription technology, primarily related to Intracellular Receptors (IRs) and Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription (STATs).