POWAY, CALIF., January 11 /CNW/ - NEXUS Biosystems announced that
Vanderbilt University's High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Facility has selected
the Universal Store to manage its ever-growing collection of synthetic small
molecules and natural products. The Universal Store will serve as the main
repository for maintaining and managing Vanderbilt's collection as a part of
its basic research and translational drug discovery activities. Multiple local
and extramural medicinal, synthetic, and natural products-based chemistry
efforts contribute to the population of this collection.

This collection is utilized in large part by the Vanderbilt Institute of
Chemical Biology's (VICB) High-Throughput Screening (HTS) Facility. This
facility utilizes state-of-the-art instrumentation and data management tools
to interrogate chemical libraries, enabling identification of compounds and
reagents for use in basic research, therapeutics, and diagnostics. The
facility serves the Vanderbilt research community in developing and running
HTS on a wide variety of targets using Vanderbilt's local chemical compound
collection. In addition the facility exists as a national resource for
screening G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), ion channels, and transporters
as one of the ten-member, NIH-funded, Molecular Libraries Screening Center
Network (MLSCN): http://mli.nih.gov/mlscn/index.php

"We are very excited about the selection of our instruments as a major
component of the VICB's on-going research initiative," stated Tommy Bui, VP of
Business Development for NEXUS. "The VICB requires a sample management system
that can achieve demanding requirements for performance, reliability, and most
importantly, sample integrity. Vanderbilt's decision to implement the
Universal Store further validates NEXUS' technology as a premier solution for
the storage, retrieval, and management of diverse chemical libraries."

Dave Weaver, Director of the Vanderbilt HTS Facility, said, "We are
thrilled to be working with NEXUS to deploy its compound storage and
management system. We extensively evaluated numerous compound management
systems and we particularly prized the Universal Store's flexibility,
scalability, and functionality. For us, getting a system that was able to
serve our present needs while being built on a design philosophy that ensures
its ability to accommodate future advancements in compound storage was
extremely appealing."

About NEXUS Biosystems, Inc.

NEXUS Biosystems, a privately held company based in Poway, California,
USA, has since 1996 been a developer and provider of enabling technologies and
automation systems for pharmaceutical, biotech, agrochemical, and academic
research institutions worldwide. Current products include the Universal
Store(R) family of next-generation sample storage and retrieval systems, the
Crystal Farm(R) line of protein crystallization systems, the IRORI(R) line of
chemical synthesis technologies and services, and in No. America and Asia
NEXUS is a distributor of the Covaris(TM) line of ultrasonic products for
sample dissolution, resolubulization, and high density microplate mixing.

About the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology

The Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology is a trans-institutional
initiative between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of
Medicine. The Institute's mission is to provide research and training in the
application of chemical approaches to the solution of important biomedical
problems. The proximity of the Chemistry Department and the School of Medicine
facilitates this process. Our members represent a range of research interests
and technologies with particular strengths in analytical methodology and
molecular imaging, cellular responses to chemical stress, drug discovery,
enzyme and receptor chemistry, proteomics, structural biology, and chemical
synthesis.

For further information: NEXUS Biosystems Tommy Bui, VP, Business
Development (858) 679-0770