Lynx Therapeutics, Inc. announced today that it has reached agreement on March 31, 1999 with Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc. ("Hoechst'') and the latter's affiliate, Hoechst Schering AgrEvo GmbH ("AgrEvo''), to activate a subscription to Lynx services.

The activation of the agreement enables AgrEvo to access, for a fee and minimum yearly subscription payments, a number of Lynx technologies to which Hoechst earlier had secured broad, non-exclusive access rights for itself and its affiliates.

The above Lynx technologies, which are designed to analyze gene expression, include Lynx's
Megaclone(TM) technology and two derivatives: Megasort(TM), and Massively Parallel Signature
Sequencing ("MPSS''). Megasort(TM) is designed to physically extract from two related biological
samples those genes whose expressions differ between the samples. MPSS is designed to obtain (20 base) signature sequences of (nearly) all the genes expressed in a sample.

Hoechst's rights, which are the object of an existing agreement, enable Hoechst and its affiliates to access Lynx technologies on a non-exclusive basis for all fields in return for an access fee and subscription fees above and beyond the up-front payment and the equity investment previously made by Hoechst.

Lynx will receive $2 million from Hoechst's AgrEvo affiliate for non-exclusive access to the technologies, limited to the agricultural field. Additional payments would be due under the agreement if Hoechst (or another affiliate) activates its rights to access the technologies for use in the pharmaceutical field.

In addition to the $2 million fee paid to activate the agreement, the minimum subscription payments of $2 million per year to be received by Lynx from AgrEvo will cover Lynx's costs plus commercially reasonable profits for analyses to be performed by Lynx on behalf of AgrEvo. This subscription by AgrEvo may be extended for up to three years beyond an initial one-year period.

Formed in 1992, Lynx has developed, and continues to develop, unique, proprietary technologies aimed at handling and/or analyzing, simultaneously, the DNA molecules or fragments in complex biological samples.

At the core of these technologies is Lynx's Megaclone(TM) technology which allows both the
simultaneous cloning of millions of DNA molecules or fragments in a sample, and the parallel probing or assaying of the millions of resulting clones, all without requiring prior separation, purification, individual amplification, or identification of any of the templates.

Applications include the identification of genes differentially expressed between samples, the
characterization of gene expression within a sample, and a novel, highly efficient means for genotyping large numbers of genetic markers or single nucleotide polymorphisms (``SNPs''), simultaneously, against very large numbers of genomes. 

N1691