MADISON, WI - October 9, 2003 - NimbleGen Systems, Inc. (NGS) announced today that they received two grants totalling $2.5 million awarded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). These grants are part of NHGRI's Encyclopaedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project.

With these combined awards, NimbleGen was the recipient of more money than any other private company, and the organization with the highest total number of grants awarded under the ENCODE project. "These grants represent further validation of the fundamental utility of NimbleGen's technology to explore and describe genome structure and function, and the strength of our internal scientific program" said Dr. Stanley Rose, NGS President and CEO.

The first grant, "Discovery of Binding Sites for Transcription Factors", with Dr. Roland Green, NGS Chief Technology Officer as Principal Investigator, was awarded $1.3 million. NimbleGen will collaborate with the laboratory of Dr. Peggy Farnham at the University of Wisconsin on this grant. "DNA Array-based Exon Detection and Linkage Mapping," with Mark McCormick, Senior Research and Development Scientist at NGS as Principal Investigator, was awarded $1.2 million. NimbleGen will collaborate with the laboratory of Dr. Michael Pirrung at Duke University on this grant. Both grants are payable over a three year period.

"The NGS system is uniquely suited to accomplish the goals of the ENCODE project. The ability to create custom high-density arrays allows us to rapidly prototype and optimise array designs to meet the needs of the particular application, in this case, identification of all transcription factor binding sites in the human genome" stated Green. "We look forward to using the NimbleGen array technology to unravel the complexity of the human spliceome. This project will not only enhance our basic understanding of alternative splicing, but also a variety of human diseases related to splicing" stated McCormick.

The overall goal of the ENCODE project, which has several components, is to identify all functional elements of the human genome. NGS scientists are concentrating on the component that deals with the development of new or improved technologies for finding functional elements in genomic DNA. The NHGRI will award a total of approximately $7.8 million to this component within the ENCODE project.

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.