European Commission Grants 2,9 M EUR (3,9 M$) to Colon and Breast Cancer Biomarker Consortium (COBRED) Coordinated by BioSystems International

COBRED consortium announces that the EU Commission has awarded a
2,9 M EUR (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 - Innsbrueck, 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 Innsbrueck, 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.

This work is supported by funding under the Sixth Research
Framework Programme of the European Union, Project COBRED
(LSH-2005-037730). 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.