MADISON, WI - July 28, 2003 - NimbleGen Systems Inc. announced today the immediate availability of a human whole-genome, long oligo array. While several companies have announced the coming of the entire human transcript on a single chip, this announcement marks the first commercial availability.

NimbleGen's human array is composed of almost 200,000 long oligo probes (60mers), with an average coverage of 5 probes per gene. These chip designs, first announced by Dr. Emile Nuwaysir, NimbleGen's Director of Business Development, at BIOCHIPS 2003, are currently being used by researchers for gene expression analysis and comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) studies. The Company is working with researchers on several other novel applications and designs.

This 60mer human whole-genome array adds to NimbleGen's current offerings of over 120 catalog genomes, including all model organisms. The Company offers array solutions in long and short oligo formats.

NimbleGen's Chairman of the Board, Robert J. Palay, commented, "Our announcement today heralds the availability of single chip whole human genome analysis to all customers. Previously, only our early adopter customers had access. A number of companies have recently released announcements, including one last week by Applied Biosystems (NYSE: ABI), that they are working on a whole human genome array, hoping to offer it by the end of the year. NimbleGen customers have had access to the power of the entire human genome on a chip since early this year."

Added Dr. Nuwaysir, "We are excited to be the first to introduce this long-awaited product to the life science market. It highlights NimbleGen's capability to manufacture whole-genome or focused arrays for any sequenced genome, in long or short oligo formats, in a rapid and flexible way."

About NimbleGen Systems Inc.
NimbleGen Systems provides customized high-density microarray products and services with unprecedented flexibility for functional genomics experiments. NimbleGen's technology combines photo-deposition chemistry with digital light projection to shorten array fabrication from months to less than three hours, and NimbleGen scientists are aggressively developing and deploying new microarray applications to speed discovery research. Customers benefit from extreme flexibility, optimized array design, highly reproducible array fabrication and statistically robust results-all with low cost and quick turnaround.