Incyte Collaborates With Stanford to Develop Scientific Standards for Genes Palo Alto, CA, January 4, 2001 - Incyte Genomics, Inc. (Nasdaq: INCY) announced today that it is making a significant financial contribution to the Gene Ontology project at Stanford University for the development of a scientific standard for describing and querying the functions of genes. This gift marks the beginning of a collaboration between Incyte and the Gene Ontology Consortium, of which Stanford is a key contributor. The Gene Ontology Consortium is composed of several academic, governmental, and commercial groups with the common goal of creating a common language that facilitates the sharing of information among the various groups involved in gene identification. Incyte's funding will go directly to the Department of Genetics at Stanford, where the Gene Ontology project is headed by Dr. J. Michael Cherry. "Incyte is a recognized leader in the development of genomic databases," says Cherry. "Their contribution will no doubt have a substantial impact on the pace of research ongoing in our laboratory." In addition to the financial gift, Incyte will also provide Stanford the gift of a royalty free license for the Gene Ontology Consortium to use Incyte's patented Protein Functional Hierarchy, a proprietary vocabulary developed by Incyte for the functional categorization of genes. According to Michael Ashburner of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England, "One of the major challenges facing genomic research today is that of integrating sequence data with the vast, and growing, body of data from functional analyses of genes. One step towards meeting this challenge is to design an ontology to represent gene function, and to implement this within a genomic database. The advantages that would flow from this are several." Ashburner continued, "One major advantage is that if different 'single-organism' databases adopted the same ontology, then the scientific community would have a powerful method for exploring the functional aspects of the genomes of several different organisms. Another major advantage is that this will provide an aide to the discovery of the function of new sequences." Annotating the genome by attaching function and meaning to its genes will help scientists to more quickly determine similarities among newly and previously sequenced DNA. Moreover, having this data written in a common language will allow researchers to better predict the type of protein the new sequence encodes. Armed with this information, drug companies can effectively target drug development while weeding out leads that would otherwise yield ineffective results. Incyte Genomics, Inc. is the leading provider of an integrated platform of genomic technologies designed to aid in the understanding of the molecular basis of disease. Incyte develops and markets genomic databases, genomic data management software, microarray-based gene expression services, related reagents and services. These products and services assist pharmaceutical and biotechnology researchers with all phases of drug discovery and development, including gene discovery, understanding disease pathways, identifying new disease targets and the discovery and correlation of gene sequence variation to disease. For more information, visit Incyte's web site at http://www.incyte.com. Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of factors that may cause results to differ, see Incyte's SEC reports, including its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2000. Incyte disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.