White Point SystemsWHITE POINT SYSTEMS, INC.

PRESS RELEASE

CONTACT:
Gregg R. Dietzman
White Point Systems, Inc.
(360) 378-7292

FOR RELEASE: January 4, 1999

WHITE POINT SYSTEMS LICENSES NAPIS® LABORATORY FOR USE BY THE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATIVE BIODIVERSITY GROUPS

(Friday Harbor, WA) -- White Point Systems, Inc. (WPS, a privately held company), today announces a licensing agreement for the NAPIS Laboratory database software with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) located in Balboa Ancon, Panama.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute will administrate the use of NAPIS Laboratory by interested International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) programs. The ICBG programs each offer a model for contemporary natural products drug discovery efforts that are consistent with sustainable harvest and conservation initiatives and emphasize benefits sharing. NAPIS will support the ICBG's by integrating bioassay data with field biology data to allow query for important organism group / chemistry / biological activity relationships, in addition to specimen and sample data management for tracking and administrating progress. Groups providing natural products source materials will use NAPIS Lite for data entry and management in the field.

NAPIS (NAtural Products Information System) supports drug discovery researchers at the government, industry, and university level by providing a link between the library, laboratory, and the field. The incorporation of GIS technology allows traditional database tables to be related to spatial features on computer-based maps. Researchers can query using the GIS map and drill down on chemical structures, or vice versa, query on source organism / chemistry / bioactivity and show the results on a map. NAPIS Laboratory is developed within a network environment but can also function autonomously, it is modular, scaleable and secure.

NAPIS is delivered at three levels: NAPIS Enterprise (Oracle), NAPIS Laboratory (Paradox) and the limited feature-set NAPIS Lite (Paradox, free download at www.wps2.com). The extended information handling requirements faced by drug discovery programs that screen natural products are met by the NAPIS technology, where they can be converted to assets for guiding future efforts and enhance the probability of success.

White Point Systems, Inc. is an innovative service company that supports the pharmaceutical industry with natural products chemistry programs, and the natural resource management industry with environmental assessment services; programs serving both these industries incorporate advanced technologies for information handling. NAPIS was developed in part with grant funds from the US National Cancer Institute, Small Business Innovation Research grant program. WPS has strategic alliances with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) for GIS, and with Oxford Molecular Group and MDL Information Systems for chemical structure handling technologies.


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