2501 Davey Road
Woodridge, IL 60517
Phone: 630-783-4600
www.medichem.com

Michael T. Flavin, chairman, president and CEO
NASDAQ:MCLS

Overview

Founded in 1987, MediChem is a drug discovery technology and services company offering structural proteomics, early stage discovery and medicinal chemistry and a range of integrated chemistry R&D capabilities to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company's proprietary platform technologies in the areas of proteomics, biocatalysis, chiral chemistry, X-ray crystallography and automated process research speed the development of new therapies.

Through its subsidiaries, Emerald BioStructures and ThermoGen, MediChem offers opportunities to engineer, express and purify recombinant proteins using a variety of host expression systems and to manipulate the proteins on a genetic level. The company's combinatorial chemistry efforts employ its proprietary AutoOptimize system-a method for optimizing chemical processes using automated combinatorial equipment and statistically designed experimental protocols to generate a library of hundreds of unique reaction conditions. In addition, the company offers strategic drug development services.

In January 2002, DeCode genetics Inc., of Reykjavik, Iceland, said it was buying MediChem in a stock swap worth about $83.6 million. At the completion of the merger, DeCode will have MediChem's 100,000-square-foot facility in Woodridge, its 40,000-square-foot center in Lemont, Ill., and MediChem's wholly owned subsidiaries: ThermoGen, Emerald BioStructures and Advanced X-Ray Analytical Services. DeCode plans to keep all facilities open, but will consolidate some operations.

Partners

The company has a partnership with Elitra Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, to discover and develop drug candidates against microbial infections. MediChem also has a collaboration with Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco, in structural proteomics for drug development, initially focused on ubiquitin ligases.