Hopkinton, Mass.--8/6/02--Zymark Corporation is pleased to announce the release of CLARA™ 2.2, the third iteration of the CLARA software suite, which continues to build upon its industry leading performance and ease of use. Developed for the scientists' needs, CLARA is an integral part of any successful drug discovery automation solution.

CLARA incorporates new Plug-and-Play resource adapters to provide simplified environmental setup. Any instrument in the automated system is instantly identified by CLARA and ready for drag and drop assay creation. CLARA has more than 100 adapters for third party instruments, giving users an unprecedented degree of system flexibility. In addition, CLARA's optimization tools have been enhanced to further improve assay automation and throughput. The well-known application scheduler has been updated increasing computational speed. The new real-time Gantt Chart displays run-time progress and completion of instructions, enabling effective resource utilization.

Assay development and validation is streamlined by one-click simulation of any instrument in the system. Advanced User Notification allows assays to run unattended: cell phones, pagers, and email accounts can be contacted in response to resource errors, data milestones, or quality assurance statistics.

Available for use with every Zymark Twister® II and integrated system, CLARA 2.2 is available as a new or upgrade package. This software is key to the development of HTS, genomic and proteomic automated solutions.

Zymark is a leading provider of automation technologies and products serving the worldwide life science, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. The company has introduced new automation paradigms that have empowered scientists to raise laboratory research to a new, more industrialized level. Zymark provides direct sales, service and applications support throughout the world and hosts the annual ISLAR conference on laboratory automation. For more information about Zymark Corporation and its products, visit www.zymark.com