For Immediate Release, August 6, 2002

TORONTO, ONTARIO (August 6, 2002) – Affinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a leader in structure guided drug discovery, today announced the appointment of Dr. Judd Berman as Senior Vice President, Chemistry.

Dr. Berman is a recognized leader in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Prior to joining Affinium, he was Director and Site Head, High Throughput Chemistry, Research Triangle Park, and Interim Site Head for Computational, Analytical and Structural Sciences for GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and health care companies. His previous roles included Department Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Glaxo Wellcome, where he specialized in metabolic diseases, target class research and combinatorial chemistry. Prior to joining GlaxoSmithKline, Dr. Berman was a senior scientist at the Merrell Dow Research Institute, working on cardiovascular diseases. He earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from University of California San Diego, and a B.A. from Boston University.

“Dr. Berman’s experience in the pharmaceutical industry, along with his broad range of expertise in medicinal chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, and structure guided drug design make him an ideal addition to Affinium’s senior management team. As well, his proven ability to build effective chemistry teams, in combination with his experience in removing bottlenecks from the drug discovery process, perfectly compliment Affinium’s integrated, team based approaches to drug discovery,” said Dr. John D. Mendlein, Chairman and CEO. “As we continue to advance our internal programs, while building strategic alliances with pharmaceutical partners, we will rely upon Dr. Berman’s leadership to accelerate our chemistry initiatives.”

Affinium Pharmaceuticals is a structure guided drug discovery company. The Company’s proprietary, integrated drug discovery process is designed for rapid advancement of small molecule programs from gene to clinic. Affinium is actively engaged in its own internal small molecule programs. The Company’s processes enable high throughput target production, determination of target function and structure, and determination of target structure with bound hits and leads to accelerate chemistry for 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, Genesys Capital Partners Inc., and HBM BioVentures, as well as industrial partners Aurora Biosciences and the Bruker Companies.