Versant Powers High-Performance Bioinformatics Firm Eidogen
Target Informatics Platform Speeds Discovery of Cures for Diseases, Aimed At Major Pharmaceutical Companies

FREMONT, Calif., Aug. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Versant Corporation (Nasdaq: VSNT), an industry leader in enterprise-level systems involving real-time and object data, today announced that Eidogen, Inc. embeds the Versant database in the revolutionary Eidogen Target Informatics Platform (TIP). Versant expects to gain new deployments as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide adopt Eidogen's new platform.

Eidogen is an innovative company in the field of computational drug discovery, founded by Derek Debe, Ph.D. and William Goddard, Ph.D. Dr. Goddard is The Charles and Mary Ferkel Professor of Chemistry and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Debe is the developer of the STRUCTFAST protein structure determination technology at Caltech, which
Eidogen has licensed as a foundation of its Target Informatics Platform.

Eidogen's TIP is the world's first structural and comparative proteomics enterprise software solution. TIP allows drug discovery researchers and organizations to attack their druggability, selectivity, toxicity, and reduced market exclusivity problems. TIP supports new and truly collaborative research in target prioritization, lead discovery, and lead optimization. TIP includes mathematical models uniting protein sequences, structures, and drug binding sites. The biochemical data and additional proprietary algorithms are captured as object-oriented software code.

" Versant plays a crucial role in TIP as the storage facility for all of our biochemical data," said Dr. Debe, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Eidogen. "Other bioinformatic approaches often attempt to 'map' the complex biological connections into a relational database for long-term storage, resulting in very cumbersome code and very poor performance. The complex connections encountered in biology are best expressed as direct references between objects, because that's what they really are. Versant makes it easy to build a system based on these biological models. Without Versant technology, this product would have been almost impossible to build within our time constraints."

"Versant is pleased to play a critical role in Eidogen's success," said Nick Ordon, president and chief executive officer of Versant. "Their advances will result in new discoveries in human genomics to help deliver drugs that treat disease and improve people's lives. The potential of being deployed in major pharmaceutical companies and being a part of the drug discovery process is very exciting and important for Versant."

VDS Object Database, now in its 6th generation, is the industry's only truly scalable, enterprise-capable object database management system. It is uniquely suited to handle the storage and access needs of complex graph, navigational and hierarchical data. For this class of data and access needs, it provides a superior high-performance and agile alternative to custom handcrafted solutions that are needed with traditional relational storage formats. Through features such as online schema evolution, dual caching, replication and fault tolerance, Versant customers have enjoyed superior performance, reliability and scalability, reduced development times and the ability to adapt to changing business conditions.

About Versant

Versant Corporation has led the industry in highly scalable, reliable object management and real-time solutions for complex enterprise-level systems since it’s founding in 1988. The company's Object Database Management System (ODBMS) serves as the core database for fraud detection yield management, real-time data collection and analysis, operation support systems (OSS) and
other large-scale applications in the telecommunications, financial services, transportation and defense industries. Versant manages data for mission-critical systems in use by British Airways, US Government, Financial Times, and other leading Global 1000 companies. Versant has recently broadened its product line to offer real-time solutions for manufacturing, security and logistics. For more information, call 510-789-1500 or visit http://www.versant.com.

About Eidogen, Inc.

Eidogen is a Pasadena, California-based company committed to developing the finest computational drug discovery platforms ever developed. Eidogen's Target Informatics Platform (TIP) is the world's first structural and comparative proteomics enterprise software solution. TIP allows drug discovery researchers and organizations to attack their druggability, selectivity, toxicity, and reduced market exclusivity problems by supporting new and truly collaborative research in target prioritization, lead discovery, and lead optimization. Please visit http://www.eidogen.com to learn more.

Forward Looking Statements Involve Risks and Uncertainties

This press release may contain "forward-looking" statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about Versant's business relationship with Eidogen and the impact this may have on Versant's performance. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual events or results may differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. These factors include, but are not limited to Versant's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding such relationship, the continued relationship with Eidogen, the market acceptance of an enterprise-wide proteomics platform, and Eidogen's adoption and continued success in the bioinformatics sector. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause Versant's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including
the risk that customers may not perceive material benefits from these solutions and the risk that the solutions may fail to deliver the expected functionality. These and other related risks are described in more detail in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's most recent Reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q made with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release, and the Company has no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

NOTE: Versant, VDS and ODBMS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Versant Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other products are a registered trademark or trademark of their respective company in the United States and/or other countries.