Global biopharmaceuticals leader uses GenomeQuest to ask more and better patent search questions

Westborough, Massachusetts - February 13, 2006 – Gene-IT, a leader in biological sequence search for research and IP, today announced an agreement to provide its flagship GenomeQuest™ service to Chiron Corporation, a leader in biopharmaceuticals, vaccines and blood testing.

GenomeQuest is a biological sequence search tool that lets end-users survey the patent landscape, providing them with full freedom to design and operate their own searches on patentability questions without the need for search intermediaries.

Ron Ranauro, CEO of Gene-IT, said, “We are delighted that Chiron, a recognized leader in biopharmaceuticals, has chosen GenomeQuest to realize the benefits of creating and directing their genomic sequence searches themselves. GenomeQuest’s continuing rapid adoption by the scientific and legal IP research communities is a testament to its ability to enable researchers to ask more and better questions of their own design, in order to get the answers they need, saving time and increasing confidence.”

GenomeQuest provides automated search capability and context-sensitive views of sequence information. The system couples sequence retrieval with sequence comparison for inter- and cross-species comparison of up-to-date biological and patent reference data. Users initiate questions by retrieving sequence records using text identifiers, gene names, patent numbers and other keywords, and immediately cross-compare them with new information contained in and linked to sequence alignments.