Lynx Therapeutics, Inc. announced today Aventis CropScience of Lyon, France, has renewed its nonexclusive access to Lynx's genomics discovery services, limited to the agricultural field, for an additional year. The renewal by Aventis CropScience includes their payment of a fee for genomics discovery services to be performed by Lynx. 

"We are pleased with Aventis CropScience's decision to continue utilizing our genomics discovery services,'' said Dr. Norrie Russell, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lynx. "Lynx's technology platform is an integral part of Aventis CropScience's research program and, as such, we believe it will provide significant benefits to them. 

Aventis CropScience initially obtained access to Lynx's services in March 1999, through activation of an existing agreement by their affiliate, Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc. In addition, Lynx and Aventis CropScience signed a three-year research collaboration agreement in September 1999, which provides Aventis CropScience with exclusive access to Lynx's genomics discovery services for the study of certain plants, which is aimed at developing new crop varieties and other agricultural products. In addition to genomic discovery services, the exclusive agreement also includes the development of genomic maps of certain plants and the discovery of trait-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, for the subject plants. 

Lynx is a leader in the development and application of novel technologies for the discovery of gene
expression patterns and genomic variations important to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and
agricultural industries. These technologies are based on Megaclone(TM) technology, Lynx's
unique and proprietary cloning procedure, which transforms a sample containing millions of DNA
molecules into one made up of millions of micro-beads, each of which carries approximately
100,000 copies of one of the DNA molecules in the sample. Megaclone(TM) technology is the
foundation for Lynx's analytical applications, including: Massively Parallel Signature Sequencing, or MPSS® technology, which provides gene sequence information; Megasort(TM) technology,
which provides gene expression information; and Megatype(TM) technology, which is expected to
provide single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP, disease- or trait-association information. 

Company news release
N2603