European Commission grants 2,9M€ (3,9 M$) to Colon and Breast Cancer Biomarker consortium (COBRED) coordinated by BioSystems International

Evry, France. May 30, 2007. COBRED consortium announces that the EU Commission has awarded a 2,9 M€ (3,9 M$) grant as part of the 6th Framework Programme to the COBRED project coordinated by BioSystems International.

The COBRED project (www.cobred.eu) aims at discovering colon cancer (CRC) and breast cancer (BC) biomarkers / novel diagnostics for patient follow-up (monitoring markers) by exploiting the capacity of 3 state-of-the-art high-throughput technologies in an integrated systems biology approach. In addition to BioSystems International, the consortium comprises 2 other biotechnology firms (Ipsogen — Marseille, France; Biocrates — Innsbrück, Austria), 2 large comprehensive cancer centres (Institut Curie — Paris, France; Institut Gustave Roussy, — Villejuif, France) and 3 academic partners (University of Debrecen, Hungary; University of Innsbrück, Austria; University of Tartu, Estonia); the consultancy firm ARTTIC (Paris, France) will support the consortium for project management.

After 3 years, COBRED will deliver a set of biomarker / diagnostic candidates verified in preclinical studies, ready for large scale clinical validation and further development for commercialisation by the respective biotechnology firms. Furthermore COBRED will have demonstrated the potential to explore consolidated data resulting from different high-throughput technologies and clinical profiles with advanced data mining technologies for enhanced biomarker discovery. Although within the project scope COBRED focuses on biomarkers for follow-up diagnostics, the novel diagnostic candidates may have the potential to aid early cancer detection via population screening. Additionally, data gathered in the study may point to yet poorly understood cancer mechanisms.

As breast cancer is the most common cancer in European women and colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer type worldwide, diagnostics based on biomarkers have the potential to significantly improve current cancer disease management and diagnosis, providing higher sensitivity at a lower cost thus leading to a direct benefit to patients and society.

According to Dr. Laszlo Takacs, CSO of BioSystems International, and COBRED Project Coordinator "This unprecedented project has the power to discover new cancer diagnostics. I am happy to see the enthusiasm of participating clinicians at the cancer centres and of scientists at the academic and industrial laboratories."

About BioSystems International:
The mission of BioSystems International is to. Bring biomarkers to the bedside.
BioSystems International ("BSI"), headquartered in Evry, France, operates one research laboratory in France (Genopole Evry) and one in Hungary (University of Debrecen) and is currently in late-phase contract negotiations with several international pharmaceutical companies.
Since it was founded in May 2004, BSI has raised funds from Societe Generale Asset Management and received grants from the Hungarian Ministry of Education and the French Innovation Agency (Oseo Anvar).
BSI's discovery technology and unique development methods combine high throughput monoclonal antibody technology, mass spectrometry and genome research technologies. It allows BSI to achieve the targeted and quantitative analysis of virtually all proteins in body fluids of treated or untreated patient groups and control subjects with the sensitivity and precision of ELISA assays faster than any other existing technologies. BSI builds a streamlined strategy to identify and validate the most promising biomarkers via a process that includes confirmation of clinical relevance on large patient cohorts.

Contact:

François Liebaert
Vice President Business Development & Finances
BioSystems International
4, rue Pierre Fontaine
91058 Évry cedex. France
Tel : +33 1 60 87 89 32
francois.liebaert@biosys-intl.com
www.biosys-intl.com

This work is supported by funding under the Sixth Research Framework Programme of the European Union, Project COBRED (LSHB-CT-2007-037730). This document has been created in the context of the COBRED project. All information is provided "as is" and no guarantee or warranty is given that the information is fit for any particular purpose. The user thereof uses the information at its sole risk and liability. The European Commission has no liability in respect of this document, which is merely representing the authors' view.