New Haven, Connecticut, June 18, 2002 - Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a privately held bioscience company focused on the discovery of new anti-infectives, today announced that Robert A Conerly has been appointed to the newly created position of Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance.

Mr. Conerly joins Rib-X from Pharmion Corporation in Boulder, Colorado, where as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance, he led the specialty pharmaceutical company through a $65 million private equity financing in November of 2001. Prior to Pharmion, Mr. Conerly spent six years at AstraZeneca PLC, both in the US and Europe, in numerous financial positions. As Director of Business Performance for the newly merged AstraZeneca, he led senior management in the development and monitoring of performance objectives. Mr. Conerly began his professional career at Price Waterhouse, where he advanced to Senior Manager and worked in Audit Advisory Services, the Entrepreneurial Services Center and the Mergers and Acquisitions Group.

"Rib-X is firmly on its way to discovering a new class of antibiotics, and to achieve this goal we are bringing the best talent together to form our multidisciplinary team," said Dr. Susan Froshauer, the President and CEO of Rib-X. "We are pleased to have someone of Bob's caliber on board with us and have every confidence that Bob's experience, encompassing an early stage company, a major pharmaceutical entity, and one of the world's leading accounting firms, will prove to be a major asset going forward."

About Rib-X Pharmaceuticals

Rib-X Pharmaceuticals is a small molecule drug discovery company focused on the structure-based design of new classes of anti-infective agents. The Company's drug discovery strategy is focused on the exploitation of its proprietary high-resolution crystal structure of the 50S subunit of the ribosome, which performs an essential role in the fundamental process of protein synthesis, and to which many known antibiotics bind. The 50S is the target for many clinically important classes of antibiotics, including those used to treat both community-acquired and hospital pathogens. The Company's integrated research approach combines state of the art, proprietary computational analysis, X-ray crystallography, medicinal chemistry, microbiology and biochemistry, allowing for the rapid synthesis of new agents, which avoid typical antibiotic resistance mechanisms. Utilizing these tools, Rib-X has what amounts to a map of the 50S subunit of the ribosome. The Company is utilizing this advantage in the optimization of leads and the creation of new classes of antibiotics.

For more information on the Rib-X mission, please visit the Company website.

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