For Immediate Release, February 26, 2003

TORONTO, ONTARIO (February 26, 2003) - Affinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in structure guided drug discovery, today announced a strategic alliance with Albany Molecular Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMRI), a leading research, drug discovery and development company. Albany will provide chemistry-based drug discovery expertise to augment Affinium’s internal chemistry programs in anti-infectives. The alliance will focus on Affinium’s anti-infective compounds having preclinical in vivo data.

AMRI will receive fees based on the number of scientists in their chemistry team working on Affinium projects. In addition, AMRI may receive success fees for meeting certain development milestones on new compounds and downstream revenues for certain commercial products. Other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“Albany’s industry leading expertise in chemistry-based drug discovery, especially for medicinal chemistry, process development, and GMP, offers an excellent opportunity to accelerate our structure guided drug discovery programs,” said Affinium Chairman and CEO Dr. John D. Mendlein. “Albany has a strong reputation among many leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies with whom they work. We are excited about how their people and chemistry technologies will help us to advance our late stage anti-infective programs more rapidly into the clinic.”

Dr. Thomas E. D’Ambra, Albany Molecular’s Chairman and CEO, said, “We have been impressed by Affinium’s strong scientific acumen, and the progress they have made, both in their internal programs and those undertaken with collaborators. We are delighted to form this alliance, and we look forward to developing a long-term relationship that we hope will result in valuable new drug candidates.”

Affinium Pharmaceuticals is a structure guided drug discovery company. Affinium is actively engaged in its own internal small molecule discovery programs. The Company’s proprietary, integrated drug discovery process is designed for rapid advancement of small molecule discovery programs from gene to clinic. The Company’s processes enable high throughput target production, determination of target function, and visualization of target structure with bound hits and leads to accelerate chemistry in the discovery of new medicines. The Company also integrates the premier discovery capabilities of Vertex Pharmaceuticals to advance Affinium’s internal drug discovery efforts. Affinium’s processes feature mass spectrometry, NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography technologies from Bruker Daltonics, Bruker BioSpin and Bruker AXS respectively. The Company’s investors include the Lombard Odier Immunology Fund, Schweizerhall Holding AG, Genesys Capital Partners Inc., and HBM BioVentures, as well as industrial partners Vertex and the Bruker Companies.

Albany Molecular Research, Inc. is a leading research, drug discovery and development company built on a chemistry platform of comprehensive and integrated technologies, resources and capabilities. AMRI conducts pharmaceutical research and development with many leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and for its own internal discovery programs.

Affinium and Affinium Pharmaceuticals are trademark names of Affinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Statements in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may be identified by forward-looking words such as "may," "could," "should," "would," "will," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "believe" and "continue" or similar words. Readers should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. AMRI's actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, some of which AMRI may not be able to predict and may not be within AMRI's control. Factors that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to (a) AMRI's ability to attract and retain experienced scientists, (b) trends in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies outsourcing chemical research and development, (c) AMRI's ability to take advantage of proprietary technology and expand the scientific tools available to it, (d) AMRI's performance under the contract with Affinium, including its ability to achieve success fees, royalties, and identify and develop small molecule drug candidates; (e) Affinium's continuous utilization of AMRI's services at levels set forth in the contract and (f) Affinium's continued pursuit of programs under which AMRI provides services, as well as those factors discussed in the company's Annual Report on Form -K for the year ended December 31, 2001 as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 1, 2002 and AMRI's other SEC filings. AMRI does not undertake any duty to and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release after the date of this press release.