MADISON, WI-August 4, 2003-NimbleGen Systems, Inc. announced today the launch of ArrayScribe™, software enabling researchers to design their own high-density microarrays. Available for download through the company's website, www.nimblegen.com/arrayscribe, the software is free for a limited time.

"ArrayScribe gives researchers the ability to custom design arrays with 10 - 1000 times more probes than a spotted array," said Roland Green, NimbleGen's VP of Molecular Biology and Chief Technical Officer. "NimbleGen's microarray technology is a cost-effective solution targeting those researchers studying genomes outside the handful represented by the manufactured chips currently available."

ArrayScribe provides the ability to import probe files, specify probe placement, auto-generate mismatch sequences, specify replicate probes, determine spot size and probe density, and select and place control sequences. The resulting design files are for use in the NimbleGen array-manufacturing platform, which works with both long (70mers or longer) and short oligos.

This marks the first commercial release of ArrayScribe. The software was beta tested by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers over the last several months. "ArrayScribe has given us the capability to quickly and easily design arrays for our specific applications and genomes for which no microarrays currently exist," stated Dr. David Frisch, Director of Applications Development Group, University of Wisconsin Gene Expression Facility, Madison, WI. John Lueke, associate researcher within the Gene Expression Facility, continued, "We have created numerous designs with almost 200,000 probes each-enabling us to make a different set of high-density oligonucleotide arrays 'on the fly' within days."

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.