Symyx Direct Chemistry Cartridge Now Compatible With ISIS Systems

SANTA CLARA, CA–Aug 20, 2008 — Symyx Technologies, Inc. (SMMX – News) today announced joint releases of the Symyx Direct 6.1 chemistry data cartridge and ISIS/Host 5.2 informatics system for registering, retrieving, displaying and analyzing scientific information. These software upgrades — coupled with the upcoming release of Symyx Isentris 3.1 informatics system — remove a significant ISIS-to-Isentris transition barrier for R&D organizations working with legacy ISIS molecule databases. Symyx Direct 6.1 also enables ISIS customers to take advantage of advances in Symyx chemical representation, stereochemistry, and chemical fastsearch capabilities.

“Customers can now upgrade their existing ISIS chemical molecule databases to the latest version of Symyx Direct and continue to access those databases through their existing ISIS/Host applications,” said Dr. Trevor Heritage, President of Symyx Software. “This enables customers to embark on a phased transition from ISIS to Isentris, running the two systems in parallel while maintaining a single copy of the underlying structure database. Isentris is the only solution offering an upgrade path from ISIS that does not involve conversion of the existing chemical structure repositories to another format or chemical representation.”

Earlier this year at the Symyx Software Symposium in Boston, a major U.S. pharmaceutical company stated that the Symyx Direct data cartridge surpassed competing cartridges in query speed, accuracy and other test criteria. The chemical cartridge evaluation was undertaken with a view to selecting cartridge technology that would provide the most rapid and advanced substructure searching to increase researcher satisfaction and improve R&D productivity.

Already used by more than 80 percent of life sciences organizations, the Symyx Direct chemistry cartridge enables researchers to register, search and retrieve molecular structures and reactions stored in Oracle® relational databases. Symyx Direct technology supports Data Rgroup, Data Sgroup, flexmatch, 2-D and 3-D exact and molecule/reaction substructure searching; structure similarity, super-similarity and sub-similarity searching; reaction similarity searching; comprehensive structure registration; and searching of tetrahedral stereoisomers and non-tetrahedral stereoisomers using the Symyx NEMA algorithm.

The Symyx Direct cartridge is the only chemistry search engine that combines full reaction transformation searching, unsurpassed chemistry sophistication and proven performance with databases containing over five million reactions and over 27 million structures.

Symyx Direct 6.1 and ISIS/Host 5.2 are available now. For more information, contact inforequest@symyx.com.

About Symyx

Symyx Technologies, Inc. is the scientific R&D integration partner to companies in the life sciences, chemicals, energy, electronics and consumer products industries. With scientific R&D under tremendous economic and technical pressure, we help companies reduce R&D risk and enhance R&D productivity to help them bring more and better products to market quickly and cost-effectively. Our integrated technology platform combines electronic laboratory notebooks, content, laboratory logistics and analysis available from Symyx Software, software-driven integrated workflows available from Symyx Tools and collaborative research and directed services from Symyx Research to support the entire R&D process. In October 2007, Symyx acquired MDL Information Systems, Inc., a leading provider of innovative informatics software, databases and services that accelerate successful scientific R&D by improving the speed and quality of scientists’ decision making. Information about Symyx, including reports and other information filed by Symyx with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is available at www.symyx.com.

Symyx and Isentris are registered trademarks of Symyx Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of the Oracle Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.