PHILADELPHIA, PA, August 10, 2005 - Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (AMEX: BIO; BIOb) announced today the release of the KnowItAll® MedChem Edition, an integrated informatics environment for optimizing lead compounds and analytical chemistry information management for medicinal chemists in drug discovery. The software seamlessly integrates the ability to generate lead compound analogs with the ability to test ADME/Tox and other properties of new compounds at the medicinal chemist's desktop.

The KnowItAll MedChem Edition offers a single software toolset that medicinal chemists can use as a complete informatics environment for their work. The system's tightly integrated applications map precisely to the lead optimization workflow with tools for:

Drug candidate proposal and modification (chemical drawing)
Lead optimization (creation of mining of directed virtual libraries)
In silico lead screening (ADME/Tox property and pharmacological activity prediction)
Analysis of spectral data (processing, storage and searching)
Data storage and mining (of combined in silico and in vitro results)
Gregory M. Banik, Ph.D., General Manager of Bio-Rad's Informatics Division commented, "The medicinal chemists with whom we meet have requested an integrated suite of tools precisely mapped to their overall workflow, including cheminformatics, analytical informatics, and predictive ADME/Tox tools. The KnowItAll MedChem Edition is our response to this request. We are excited about offering the 'one stop shop' for medicinal chemistry and lead optimization that the market has demanded."

At the heart of this new edition is the innovative new OptimizeIt™ application. This program was developed to help medicinal chemists enumerate and analyze combinatorial libraries based on the parent compound or scaffold within user-defined in silico ADME/Tox property and pharmacological activity constraints. The result is an optimized library with optimized chemical structures having both desirable predicted ADME/Tox characteristics and the desired pharmacological profiles.

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About Bio-Rad

Bio-Rad's Informatics Division (www.informatics.bio-rad.com) specializes in state-of-the-art software and database solutions for the pharmaceutical, biotech, and chemical industries. Bio-Rad is the leading publisher of fully verified spectral databases, cheminformatics, spectroscopy software, and decision support systems for drug discovery. The company's award-winning KnowItAll Informatics System offers a fully integrated environment with flexible, expandable software and database solutions for spectroscopy (MS, NMR, IR, Raman, spectral data management), cheminformatics, in silico ADME/Tox prediction, and lead optimization.

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (www.bio-rad.com) is a multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research, clinical diagnostics and informatics products. It is based in Hercules, California, and serves more than 70,000 research and industry customers worldwide through a network of more than 30 wholly owned subsidiary offices.

Various statements made within this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" for purposes of the Securities and Exchange Commission's "safe harbor" provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements contained herein involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from the Company's expectations.

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Contact Information

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Informatics Division
3316 Spring Garden Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: +1 215 382 7800
www.knowitall.com

For more information on this press release:
Name: Deborah Kernan
Phone: +1 215 349 7366
E-mail: deborah_kernan@bio-rad.com