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Libraria Partners with Rigel to Turn Genomic Targets into Drugs

-- Agreement Expands Initial Technology License into a Kinase-Specific Drug Discovery Partnership --

SAN JOSE, Calif., - May 16, 2002

Libraria, Inc. today announced that it has signed agreements with Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: RIGL) to license Libraria’s new small molecule drug discovery technology, which is complementary to Rigel’s current research and development programs.

“Rigel is an ideal first partner because of their numerous well-validated Kinase and Ligase targets,” said Barry A. Bunin, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Libraria. “The functional assays at Rigel provide rigorously validated targets and are a natural complement to Libraria’s expertise and unique technologies for designing small molecule inhibitors against these specific target classes. The Libraria technology, combined with Rigel’s medicinal chemistry expertise, can help objectively and systematically design completely new drug-like pharmacophores against gene-families such as Kinases. Our chemists will work together with Rigel’s medicinal chemists and biologists to most effectively leverage large sets of information.”

Rigel has in-licensed early access to the Libraria small molecule discovery platform to enable it to more rapidly identify lead compounds as it expands its chemistry effort. Libraria’s platform offers a unique combination of in silico molecular recognition and design technology based on validated chemical pathways from real experiments. Rigel plans to incorporate this technology into its existing functional genomics and target discovery and validation infrastructure.

“We believe that our collaborations with Libraria enhance Rigel’s position as a leader in target discovery and development,” said Donald Payan, M.D., Rigel’s Chief Scientific Officer. “The Libraria relationships greatly strengthen our potential to turn our unique targets into commercial therapeutics more rapidly than before.”

“Rigel’s drug discovery and target validation program has been very successful at identifying targets for small molecule screening,” added Dr. Bunin. “This collaboration offers a great opportunity to combine Libraria’s leading edge chemistry skills with Rigel’s best-of-breed Kinase target validation, cellular-level assays, and animal biology to accelerate the entire pre-clinical drug discovery process.”

About Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Rigel Pharmaceuticals (www.rigel.com) is a drug discovery and development company that uses advanced functional genomics tools to discover novel drug targets that can be used to develop orally administered small molecule drugs. Rigel's technology is designed to identify molecules that play an important role in regulating a human cell's response to disease by testing a very large number of proteins in a very large number of cells to determine which proteins will change the cell's response to the disease. Rigel currently has ten product development programs underway at Rigel, with five programs being proprietary programs in the product development areas of asthma/allergy, rheumatoid arthritis/inflammatory bowel disease, cancerous tumor growth and hepatitis C. Rigel expects to begin clinical trials during 2002 with one or more drug candidates from these five programs. In addition to the Rigel-owned programs, we have five programs in connection with our corporate partners in the product development areas of asthma/allergy, autoimmunity, transplant rejection and two programs in cancerous tumor growth. Rigel has multi-year collaborations with Pfizer Inc., Cell Genesys, Inc., Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C. and Novartis Pharma A.G. Rigel is based in South San Francisco, California.

About Libraria, Inc.
Libraria, Inc.(www.libraria.com) is a drug discovery technology and development company that uses advanced computational techniques to discover novel small molecules that can be used as orally administered drugs. Libraria's technology cuts the chemistry phase of small molecule drug discovery by up to 50% by leveraging known molecular structure, protocol, and bioactivity data in new patent-pending ways. Privately held, Libraria was funded by leading life science and information technology entrepreneurs, including Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. Libraria is based in San Jose, California.

This press release contains "forward-looking" statements, including statements related to Libraria’s small molecule drug discovery technology and its successful contribution to Rigel’s target discovery and validation efforts and Rigel's plans to commence clinical trials in 2002. Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause the results of Rigel or Libraria to differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements, including the risks detailed from time to time in Rigel’s SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2001. Neither Rigel nor Libraria undertakes any obligation to update forward-looking statements.