Leading Edge R&D:

AVENTIS LICENSES LeadScope ENTERPRISE

LeadScope Inc, a leading provider of chemically intelligent informatics platforms for pharmaceutical discovery, announced that Aventis has licensed LeadScope Enterprise for use in its drug discovery program.

At the core of the LeadScope Enterprise platform is a patent-pending chemical sub-structural hierarchy used for analysis, organization and access to discovery data. The LeadScope solution provides medicinal chemists, toxicologists, biochemists and computational chemists with a common platform to share data throughout the drug discovery process.

"We are delighted that Aventis has selected LeadScope Enterprise for use in its drug discovery program," said Pamela Springer, vice president of Sales for LeadScope. "We are confident that they will immediately experience the benefits of using our software."

"We have been impressed with the unique data mining and visualization capabilities of the LeadScope software," commented Dr. Robert Pearlstein, research scientist at Aventis. "We use LeadScope's Enterprise solution to warehouse and share chemical and biological data on a project-by-project basis. LeadScope's functionality and compatibility with other software packages and databases is a useful, out-of-the-box solution for Aventis."

Aventis, a world leader in pharmaceuticals and agriculture, is dedicated to improving life through the discovery and development of innovative products in the fields of prescription drugs, vaccines, therapeutic proteins, crop production and protection, animal health and nutrition. Aventis announced in November 2000 that it intends to focus on pharmaceuticals and plans to divest its activities in agriculture. With its global corporate headquarters in Strasbourg, France, Aventis employs around 95,000 people in more than 120 countries and recorded pro forma sales in 1999 of 20.5 billion euros. Aventis was launched in December 1999 through the merger of Hoechst AG of Germany and Rhone-Poulenc SA of France. For more information: www.aventis.com.

LeadScope's, www.leadscope.com, expertise includes an in-depth knowledge of advanced informatics technology and the services necessary to help organizations effectively extract and visualize the valuable knowledge contained in research data. LeadScope Inc is dedicated to working with their customers to shorten drug development time and dramatically increase the quality of research decisions.

Contact Joanne Cooper of LeadScope Inc, 614-675-3730, jcooper@leadscope.com.