SAN DIEGO, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Alanex Corporation today announced that
it has received its first milestone payment from Roche Bioscience, resulting
from achievements accomplished during the first six months of a three-year
research collaboration between the two companies.  The dollar amount of the
payment was not disclosed.
    In the alliance commencing last July, Alanex is applying its integrated
combinatorial chemistry technology to a Roche Bioscience molecular target,
with the goal of accelerating the discovery of orally bioavailable drugs to
treat pain.
    "Our early success with the Roche Bioscience program confirms our
experience with our other partners, including Novo Nordisk and Astra," said
Marvin Brown, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Alanex.  "We are
quickly becoming known as a company that delivers on the promises of
combinatorial chemistry."
    "The rapid progress of this program, resulting in our first milestone
payment to Alanex, is evidence of the power of the company's technology," said
Roger Whiting, Ph.D., senior vice president of the Roche Bioscience
Neurobiology Business Unit.  "Alanex's integrated approach, which combines
parallel synthesis, computational chemistry, medicinal chemistry and high
throughput screening has allowed us to accelerate our program."
    Under the terms of the agreement with Roche Bioscience, Alanex is
responsible for the screening of its highly diverse combinatorial chemistry
libraries and optimization of resulting leads into drug candidates identified
in the collaboration.  Roche Bioscience will be responsible for preclinical
and clinical development of drug candidates identified in the collaboration,
and will have worldwide exclusive marketing and manufacturing rights for
compounds arising from the collaboration.  Alanex will receive royalties on
sales of products resulting from the collaboration.  Financial terms of the
agreement were not disclosed.
    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 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 and
development of small molecules for the treatment of diabetes.

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