SOURCE: Symyx Technologies, Inc.

 

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwire - November 19, 2008) - Symyx Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMX) today announced that Symyx Draw 3.1, the chemical drawing application that replaces industry-leading ISIS/Draw, is now available for download at no charge for academic and non-commercial personal use (www.symyx.com/getdraw). Symyx Draw 3.1 enables scientists to draw and edit complex chemical structures and reactions with ease, facilitating the collaborative searching, viewing, registering, and archiving of scientific information. To support academic researchers, Symyx Draw 3.1 also offers exceptional publication-quality drawing capabilities for presentations, reports and scientific papers, as well as improved integration with the Microsoft® Office suite of software applications.

"Symyx Draw is a major enhancement over ISIS/Draw, offering improved publication-quality graphics and support for IUPAC names, canonical SMILES strings, InChI strings, and other useful conversion utilities," said Dr. Mariusz Gajewski, NIH-COBRE Center for Structural and Functional Neuroscience, Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences, University of Montana. "No-fee access to Symyx Draw is a great benefit for academics and demonstrates Symyx's support for the educational community."

"As Symyx Draw is increasingly adopted and deployed in the commercial research environment, hands-on experience with the application at universities prepares students for success in today's highly competitive job market and in their future scientific careers," said Dr. Trevor Heritage, president of Symyx Software. "For over ten years, we have provided a no-fee version of ISIS/Draw for academic and non-commercial personal use, and a large number of people have taken advantage of this. Today, Symyx Draw 3.1 is the best drawing package available to chemists. We are very pleased to offer this important tool as a free download to individuals again -- especially to students, teachers, and researchers in an academic setting."

Enhancements for the support of biomolecules make Symyx Draw 3.1 the drawing tool of choice for scientists engaged in biologics research who need to create, present, and document modified 1- and 3-letter peptide or nucleotide sequences.

Symyx Draw 3.1 is easier to use than ISIS/Draw by virtue of its all-purpose drawing tool, multiple-undo, user-friendly toolbar functionalities, scientific symbol chooser, large library of protecting group templates, and other usability enhancements. Symyx Draw 3.1 is also superior to ISIS/Draw in supporting enhanced stereochemical perception and in providing richer presentation- and publication-quality graphics capabilities. Draw and annotate reaction schemes with text and arrows. Apply font, color, and line thickness changes with just a few clicks using the convenient formatting toolbar.

The no-fee download of Symyx Draw 3.1 for academic and non-commercial personal use is available now. For more information, visit www.symyx.com/getdraw or contact inforequest@symyx.com.

Organizations or individuals interested in licensing Symyx Draw 3.1 as a commercial product should visit www.symyx.com/draw31.

About Symyx

Symyx Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMX) enables global leaders in life sciences, chemicals and energy, and consumer and industrial products to optimize and accelerate their scientific research and development. Through its expertise in scientific informatics management, workflow optimization, and micro-scale, parallel experimentation, Symyx helps companies transform their R&D operations to minimize the time their scientists spend on routine, repetitive tasks and to maximize their return on R&D investments. Symyx software, tools, and research services enable scientists to design, execute, analyze, and report experimental results faster, easier, and less expensively. Information about Symyx, including reports and other information filed by Symyx with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is available at www.symyx.com.

Symyx is a registered trademark of Symyx Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.