White Point Systems: Press Release 6/15/96

WHITE POINT SYSTEMS, INC.

PRESS RELEASE

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

FOR RELEASE: August 7, 1998

WHITE POINT BIOMARINE INSTALLS NAPIS^Ž LABORATORY AT THE COLLEGE OF PHARMACY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
(Friday Harbor, WA) -- White Point BioMarine, Inc. (WPBM, a privately held company), today announces a licensing agreement and installation of NAPIS Laboratory database software at the Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences (PCRPS) of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

PCRPS will use NAPIS Laboratory to support a International Cooperative Biodiversity Group natural products drug discovery program by integrating bioassay data and field biology data to allow query for important organism group / chemistry / biological activity relationships, in addition to specimen and sample data management. Groups providing PCRPS with natural products source materials will use NAPIS Lite for data entry and management.

This International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program is one of six five-year programs funded jointly by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the International Forest Service. It is awarded to a cooperative group including the PRCPS, the governments of Laos and Vietnam, Glaxo Wellcome pharmaceutical company and WPBM. In addition, WPBM will provide geographic information system (GIS) based mapping services that are used within the NAPIS software.

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.esri.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 BioMarine, Inc., incorporated in 1993, 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. WPBM 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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