MWG Biotech Partners with Dharmacon Research, Inc. for High Quality RNA Synthesis

Ebersberg, April 29, 2002 - MWG Biotech has entered into a sales and distribution agreement with Dharmacon Research, Inc., the first of a series of technical and marketing collaborations planned between the companies. Under the agreement, MWG Biotech has worldwide rights to resell Dharmacon's RNA synthesis products, services and technologies. MWG Biotech and Dharmacon expect that this partnership will significantly benefit the scientific community by expanding the availability and quality of RNA-based products and by increasing sales and distribution channels in the US and Europe.

"We are very excited about this agreement with Dharmacon, the market leader in RNA synthesis technology," says Prof. Matthias Schönermark, CEO of MWG Biotech. "With this cooperation, we are bringing together MWG Biotech's know-how in the development, production and sale of synthetic nucleic acids with Dharmacon's expertise in synthetic RNA to move into new and exciting applications in genomic and medical science and research."

Through this partnership, MWG Biotech and Dharmacon hope to expand their product and service offering. "We look forward to bringing our patented 2'-ACE RNA chemistry and international reputation for unprecedented quality to a new level in the rapid development of RNA technologies and their use in molecular and cellular biology," says Stephen Scaringe, Ph.D., CEO and President of Dharmacon Research, Inc. "This partnership with MWG Biotech will expand the line of products and services available to the scientific community for using RNA and RNAi to make significant contributions to the sciences of diagnostics, therapeutics and basic biology."

Synthetic RNA is used in a wide range of research applications for structural studies, gene function analysis and the development of novel therapeutic strategies. RNAi-mediated gene silencing methods offer an especially significant technological advantage for gene function analysis by silencing the expression of the genes to be investigated.

Dharmacon Research, Inc. is the worldwide leader in RNA synthesis and has the reputation as the most dependable and reliable source for synthetic RNA. The company's ongoing research and development effort has put Dharmacon at the forefront of technological advances in RNA synthesis chemistry. This position enables MWG Biotech to benefit from Dharmacon's success at establishing 2'ACE chemistry as the standard for the chemical synthesis RNA.

MWG Biotech is a market leader in DNA synthesis. The company has a strong R&D focus on the development of synthetic nucleic acids for use in genomic and medical research applications. MWG Biotech's successful range of HPSF oligonucleotides are based upon a proprietary technology that produces ultra pure and 100% salt-free oligonucleotides. This mission of MWG Biotech is to provide complete product and service solutions to customers' application issues.