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| |  Expansion of Diabetes Collaboration to Discover New Drugs SAN DIEGO, Dec. 9, 1996 -- Alanex Corporation and Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO) announced today an expansion of their collaboration to discover new drugs to treat diabetes. Based on the success of the collaboration, Novo Nordisk has elected to more than double the research funding payable to Alanex. Novo Nordisk will continue to have worldwide exclusive marketing rights of compounds arising out of the collaboration and Alanex will receive milestone payments and royalties on sales of products. Novo Nordisk provided Alanex with two molecular targets for diabetes and Alanex then established high throughput screens for these targets and has used its computational and combinatorial chemistry to identify and optimize compounds with desirable activity profiles. "A key aspect of the success of these projects is based on the use of Alanex's combinatorial chemistry and library design technology," said Alex Polinsky, Vice President and CSO. Alanex has built a proprietary library design and information management software, LiBrain(TM), which allows its chemists to synthesize intelligent chemical libraries for screening for biological activity. "We are extremely pleased that Novo Nordisk has elected to significantly increase their financial commitment to our collaboration. This support will allow the collaboration to accelerate the exploitation of our combinatorial chemistry technology for the discovery of novel small molecule drugs for the treatment of diabetes," said Dr. Marvin Brown, President and CEO. Since the initiation of the project in November 1995, Alanex has discovered compounds with desired animal pharmacology in one project and initial leads in a second project. Novo Nordisk is very pleased with the progress Alanex was able to achieve in such a short period of time and has, by increasing their commitment, secured the continued success of both programs. Based upon the success of this collaboration, it is anticipated that a development candidate can be selected for one of the programs in early 1998. Alanex Corporation, based in San Diego, California, is a privately held drug discovery company whose mission is to identify small molecule drugs using its proprietary drug discovery technologies. Alanex has developed and integrated its combinatorial chemistry with computational chemistry, high throughput screening and medicinal chemistry in order to accelerate the process of going from lead generation to drug candidate in a cost effective manner. In December, 1994, Alanex formed a strategic collaboration with Astra Pharma Inc. to discover and develop drugs for a novel opiod receptor. In April 1996, Alanex announced the signing of a collaboration with Novo Nordisk related to the discovery of small molecules for the treatment of diabetes. In July 1996, Alanex entered into a collaboration with Roche Bioscience, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roche Holdings, Ltd., to discover novel small molecule drugs in the area of pain management. In November, 1996, Alanex announced a collaboration with Aurora Biosciences whereby Alanex will provide its exploratory chemical library for new lead generation in Aurora's novel fluorescence screening systems. Novo Nordisk A/S is the world leader in insulin and diabetes care and also manufactures and markets a variety of other pharmaceutical products. Furthermore, the company is the world's largest producer of industrial enzymes. Headquartered in Denmark, Novo Nordisk employs approximately 13,400 people in 54 countries and markets its products in 130 countries. Its B shares are listed on the stock exchanges in Copenhagen, London, Basel, Zurich and Geneva. Its ADS's are listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "NVO."
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