New Software From Accelrys and Boston University Aids Understanding of Protein-Protein Interactions

Business Wire, June 15, 2004

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE2K

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 15, 2004

Accelrys Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCL) today announced an exclusive agreement with Boston University under which Accelrys will distribute two new software methods for studying protein-protein docking, ZDOCK and RDOCK. These algorithms enable more efficient life science research by helping scientists to understand the action of therapeutically interesting proteins by predicting the manner in which two proteins interact at the atomic level.

Most, if not all, proteins have interacting partners in a cell. Characterization of these interactions is critical to an exact understanding of biological process and can be used to design new therapeutic agents, such as drugs, biomarkers, or diagnostics, to treat a wide variety of diseases. As the structures of many protein-protein complexes have not been experimentally determined, computational methods such as ZDOCK and RDOCK provide fast alternatives to establish the important geometric relationships.

ZDOCK and RDOCK were developed in the laboratory of Professor Zhiping Weng, an associate professor at Boston University. "These programs have already been used to successfully predict protein-protein interactions in a number of blind tests," said Professor Weng. "This collaboration with Accelrys will bring these tools to the desktop of more researchers and increase scientific developments based on protein-protein docking."

"As our awareness of the complexities of the human body increases, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are finding that they need to account for the multitude of interactions that a protein makes in the cell in selecting new protein targets or designing drugs," said Dr. Scott Kahn, chief science officer at Accelrys. "By providing the ability to predict what interactions a protein makes with other proteins, scientists can now prioritize in silico which of these interactions to study further experimentally, thus saving significant time to market and cost of development."

About Accelrys Inc.

Accelrys Inc. is the parent of Accelrys Software Inc., a leading provider of software for computation, simulation, and the management and mining of scientific data used by biologists, chemists and materials scientists, including nanotechnology researchers for product design as well as drug discovery and development. Accelrys technology and services are designed to meet the needs of today's leading research organizations. The company has headquarters in San Diego. For more information about Accelrys, visit its Web site at http://www.accelrys.com/.> When used anywhere in this document, the words expects, believes, anticipates, estimates, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements herein may include statements addressing future financial and operating results of Accelrys. Accelrys has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations about future events. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the successful implementation of Accelrys' strategic plans, the acceptance of new products, the obsolescence of existing products, the resolution of existing and potential future patent issues, additional competition, changes in economic conditions, and other risks described in documents Accelrys has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Form 10-Q. All forward-looking statements in this document are qualified entirely by the cautionary statements included in this document and such filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by forward-looking statements contained in this document. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this document. Accelrys disclaims any undertaking to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

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