NovAliX SAS ("NovAliX") today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority interest in Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH ("GRAFFINITY") of Heidelberg, Germany, a leading fragment based drug discovery services company. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

NovAliX' President, Stephan Jenn stated: "The acquisition of Graffinity will be a significant step toward our goal of providing integrated drug discovery services. With a unique and diverse small molecule library and patented SPR-imaging technology, the Graffinity platform is fully complementary to NovAliX' offerings in X-Ray crystallography, supramolecular mass spectrometry and liquid-/solid-state NMR. With this second technology-oriented acquisition in 2010, we are forming a group of more than 120 scientists developing and applying cutting edge research capabilities in discovery and development of innovative medicines.  We are an external innovation partner for our pharmaceutical clients."

Dr. Kristina Schmidt, CEO of Graffinity, commented: "NovAliX and Graffinity, both being management- and employee-owned companies, share common entrepreneurial values which have driven seamless integration as we have already experienced in joint projects. We now have a complete offering of discovery services covering the spectrum from first hit generation to lead optimization."

Mathias Woker, Chief Business Officer of Graffinity, stated: "Joining forces allows our companies to offer relevant services to the new marketplace. Pharma and biotech customers have the opportunity with the NovAliX Group to flexibly outsource comprehensive discovery functions."

About NovAliX SAS - www.novalix.com
Strasbourg, France based NovAliX Group is focusing on the development of enabling chemistry and biophysical technologies to support the pharmaceutical industry's outsourcing needs from discovery to manufacturing. With X-ray protein crystallography, supramolecular mass spectrometry and organic chemistry NovAliX offers comprehensive integrated services in small molecule drug discovery. With advanced NMR technologies, NovAliX provides fine characterization of biologics, thorough analysis of APIs and polymorphism studies to support pharmaceutical development and manufacturing teams.

NovAliX Group, a team of 120 scientists, is located in state-of-the-art laboratory facilities in the Strasbourg-Illkirch BioParc and throughout Europe.

For more information, please visit www.novalix.com.

About Graffinity Pharmaceuticals GmbH - www.graffinity.com
Heidelberg, Germany based Graffinity Pharmaceuticals is a leader in the field of small molecule fragment-based drug discovery. Graffinity's fragment screening platform combines chemical microarrays with a proprietary method for the standardized, label-free detection of compound-protein interactions via SPR-imaging. The company's rapid and scalable drug discovery technology explores a rich chemical universe to identify drug fragments which address challenging drug targets. With its 110,000-compound library that contains 24,000 true fragments, Graffinity possesses one of the most diverse fragment libraries. Graffinity's unique fragment based discovery platform was invented in 1998, and has been in routine industrial use since 2002 in screening more than 90 drug targets.

For more information, please visit www.graffinity.com.