Lynx Therapeutics, Inc. today reported a net loss of $3.2 million or $(0.29) per share for the first quarter ended March 31, 1999, compared to a net loss of $8,000 or $(0.00) per share for the same quarter in 1998.

The results for the first quarter of 1998 included a gain of $3.2 million related to the March 1998
sale of the company's antisense program to Inex Pharmaceuticals Corporation. As of March 31,
1999, Lynx had cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $23.7 million.

First quarter revenues were $0.7 million and $0.8 million for 1999 and 1998, respectively.
Revenues for 1999 include $0.5 million earned under a research collaboration signed in late 1998
with E.I. DuPont De Nemours and Company to apply Lynx's technologies to the study of certain
crop plants and their protection and $0.2 million earned under a non-exclusive service agreement
with Hoechst Marion Roussel, Inc. (``Hoechst''), activated in March 1999 for the benefit of
Hoechst Schering AgrEvo GmbH, an affiliate of Hoechst.

The 1998 revenues included $0.7 million earned under an agreement with BASF AG for access to
gene expression analysis services to be performed by Lynx.

Operating expenses were $4.3 million in both the quarter ended March 31, 1999 and in the same
quarter in 1998. The company's efforts in 1999 continue to focus on building production capacity
for the anticipated commercial application of its genomic technologies.

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.

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