Allylix Announces $1.5 Million in Series A Funding and Appointment of New CEO

LEXINGTON, Ky. & SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 30, 2005--Allylix, Inc., a natural and fine chemical company, today announced that the company has successfully secured $1.5 million in capital and appointed Carolyn Fritz, M.B.A., as its new CEO. The financing will be used to fund the development and scale-up of its first products. The close of this round of funding was lead by President and CEO, Carolyn Fritz.

Allylix is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of terpenes, a class of natural chemicals found in plants. These natural chemicals are of significant interest to the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical markets as a result of their use as fragrances, flavors, agricultural products and new medicines. Historically, these natural chemicals have been too costly for most applications because of the expense of extracting them from plants. Allylix's technology allows it to cost effectively produce a wide range of these natural chemicals using its high yielding fermentation process and thereby making these valuable compounds available to many new market applications.

The company was founded by Dr. Joseph Chappell at the University of Kentucky and Dr. Joseph Noel of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, Calif., along with Corporate and Intellectual Property Attorney, Tom Jurgensen to commercialize their research.

"This funding is a major step towards the realization of our goal to bring these natural chemicals to market," said Carolyn Fritz, president and CEO of Allylix. "With this technology, we are able to provide vital compounds to our customers, thus enabling the development of products that would have otherwise been too costly."

Leading the Series A funding is the Bluegrass Angels, a group of Kentucky investors seeking to develop start-up companies in the region by providing entrepreneurs with seed capital. Also contributing to this round are California angel investors, the Commonwealth Seed Fund of Kentucky, a state-managed venture capital fund, and the Kentucky Commercialization Fund, a state initiative administered by the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation.

Carolyn Fritz brings vast entrepreneurial and manufacturing experience in the health and life science industry to Allylix. During her career, she has established and built-up multiple start-up businesses as well as successfully brought developing products to market. Prior to Allylix, Ms. Fritz led Dow Chemical's Biomaterials and Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing businesses where she established and built a biomaterials business focused upon the development of new polymers and chemicals from microbial fermentation and plant oil derivatives and a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing business producing Phase I-III clinical materials. Ms. Fritz also served as a member of the Board of Innovase, an industrial enzyme joint venture with Diversa. From 1993 to 1999, Ms. Fritz was president of Cargill's Specialty Oils Business, a biotechnology business focused on developing new food and industrial products from plant oils. Here, she managed the business' growth from a start-up to substantial profitable business. She is a member of the Department of Energy, USDA Biomass Advisory Board and a former member of BIO's Industrial Biotechnology Board. Ms. Fritz has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. from George Washington University and a B.S. in Engineering from Iowa State University.

About Allylix, Inc.

Headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky with business offices in San Diego, Calif., Allylix, Inc. develops fine chemicals and valuable production platforms for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, agricultural and flavor & fragrance markets. Allylix's Morphazyme Technologies(TM) can produce high-value chemicals identical to those rare chemicals found in nature but in greater quantities, as higher quality pure products and at lower production costs than traditional sources that rely on extracting the chemicals from rare biological sources or costly and low yielding chemical synthesis. Allylix's technology is based on research developed at the University of Kentucky and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. For more information, please visit www.allylix.com.