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Rigel Announces Restructuring To Reduce Spending

Company Cuts Staff While Increasing Focus on Major Drug Development Programs

South San Francisco, CA - January 31, 2003

Rigel Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: RIGL) announced today that the company eliminated 24 additional positions from its current workforce. This reduction and one undertaken in the fall of 2002 brings the total reductions to 38. After these reductions in force the company will have approximately 140 employees. As a result of this reduction in force, Rigel will realign its personnel base, predominantly by eliminating positions in executive management, basic research and administration while preserving and focusing on the company's drug development capabilities. Rigel also announced today that, separately from the reduction in force, Brian C. Cunningham, President and Chief Operating Officer of Rigel, has resigned from the company for personal reasons.

"In order to achieve our strategic goals, we must optimize the use of our resources, which requires a restructuring to provide greater emphasis on preclinical and clinical development," said James Gower, Rigel's Chief Executive Officer. "We believe that these actions, while certainly difficult, will give us necessary focus and better position us to bring forward our most promising clinical candidates and programs."

The current restructuring will enable Rigel to maintain development operations and research leadership in the company's three main areas of research, and focus on advancing existing drug leads into clinical development. In its immunology program, Rigel has commenced clinical trials of its first product candidate, for allergic rhinitis, and expects to select a preclinical candidate compound for an autoimmune indication later this quarter. In its hepatitis C program, Rigel expects to begin clinical testing of an antiviral agent later this year. In the area of ligases, a new class of immunology and cancer drug targets, Rigel is evaluating several compound series for preclinical development.

"We are already well along with development efforts in our immunology and hepatitis C programs, and we have leads from our other immunology, hepatitis C and ligase programs that we believe will provide preclinical drug development candidates for the next several years," Mr. Gower noted. "Our most important priority for the near-term is turning these opportunities into proven clinical compounds. This restructuring will improve our ability to accomplish our objective given the current realities in the financial markets."

About Rigel
Rigel's mission is to become a source of novel, small-molecule drugs to meet large, unmet medical needs. The company's business model is to develop a portfolio of drug candidates and to take these through phase II clinical trials, after which Rigel intends to seek commercialization partners for completion of clinical evaluation, regulatory approval and marketing. Rigel has identified three areas for its lead product research programs: mast cell inhibition to treat immunologic diseases such as asthma/allergy and autoimmune disorders, antiviral agents to treat hepatitis C and ubiquitin ligases, a new class of cancer drug target. Rigel has begun clinical testing of its first product, for allergic rhinitis, and plans to follow this with two additional drugs in the clinic by the end of 2003. Rigel's approach to drug discovery is based on advanced, proprietary functional genomics techniques that allow the company to identify targets with a demonstrable role in a disease pathway and to efficiently screen for those that are likely to be amenable to drug modulation.

This press release contains "forward-looking" statements, including statements related to Rigel's business strategy, anticipated cash savings and restructuring costs, drug development programs and clinical trial plans. 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 "plans," "intends," "expects," "believes," "projects," "anticipates" and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause Rigel's results 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 and its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2002. Rigel does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.