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5AM Solutions Releases Microarray Enterprise Manager™ Software

Platform revolutionizes high-throughput process management, collaboration, and compliance

PHOENIX, August 16, 2004—5AM Solutions, a software solution provider enabling biomedical research, today announced the release of Microarray Enterprise Manager™ (MEM). The solution was delivered in collaboration with leading scientists from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Duke University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. MEM is a web-based solution that manages all aspects of expression profiling laboratory workflow, data annotation, standardization, and sharing. This solution will facilitate more rapid progress in medical research by connecting researchers across the world with, and ensure they can easily combine and share, genomic data.

Sophisticated technologies from the Human Genome Project have enabled researchers to understand the basic tenets of human disease, which will eventually lead to cures. While expression microarrays are now a common genome-scale tool used widely in research, the vast amounts of data created by this technology at distant sites are rarely combined – slowing the progress of medical research. Collaboration and consortia, key elements of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, require sharing what and how experiments are conducted and what the results are in a meaningful way to thousands of geographically disparate scientists.

Adding to the complexity, the data must be collected, managed and distributed in a consistent manner across organizations. MEM orchestrates consistent data annotations that meet evolving industry standards for projects, samples, and the derivative microarray data.

“This solution will result in scientists being able to share data quickly and obtain real insight into human disease,” said Dr. Dietrich Stephan, TGen’s director of neurogenomics and Chairman of a Microarray Consortium funded by the NIH.

5AM worked with the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke and the National Institute of Mental Health’s Microarray Consortium scientists to develop role-based access control over business processes, the data itself, and methods for making these results public across.

“We can finally seamlessly share data across the consortium and across the world,” said Stephan.

Dr. Tom Miller, who provides NIH oversight of the Consortium, said, “The public repository and control over its content will feed the international repositories with Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) compliant and verifiable data, a significant achievement.”

MEM contains multiple components that ensure the highest quality project design, management, data annotation, and dissemination. Web lectures, online help, and example projects represent the
educational components of the software. Experimental methods and protocols can be shared, reducing the amount of data entry and enforcing consistency. MEM simplifies data standardization through a novel method of verification (MAGEmaker), provides intuitive interfaces for data entry, batch-oriented uploads and downloads of relevant files, and allows researchers to form virtual collaboration groups.

“Any Core Facility would be greatly empowered by this solution, particularly by the ontology management and Microarray Gene Expression Markup Language (MAGE-ML) production capabilities,” said Dr. Holly Dressman, Director of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Center for Genome Technology at Duke University Medical Center.

Dr. Stanley Nelson, Professor of Neurobiology and Director of the UCLA DNA Microarray Core, said, “We have a tool that makes sharing and standardization understandable, something the community has been striving for.” MEM represents the first product presented to the public by 5AM Solutions.

About 5AM Solutions
5AM provides software products and technology services for the biomedical research industry. Hospitals, Research Institutes, and Pharmaceutical companies who view data organization, work-flow optimization, analysis and data mining, and geographically-independent collaboration as critical to their success are our target customers. Web-based, interoperable solutions that access Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), support HIPAA guidelines and enforce 21 CFR 11-compliance, and grant insight into the complex data produced by the “omic” revolution represent the core of our expertise. We share a common passion to advance medicine and science through our contribution of state-of-the-art software development. www.5amsolutions.com

About TGen
TGen is a not-for-profit research institute whose primary mission is to make and translate genomic discoveries into advances in human health. Translational genomics research is a relatively new field employing innovative advances arising from the Human Genome Project to apply to the development of diagnostics, prognostics and therapies for cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes and other complex diseases. www.tgen.org

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Contact: Brent Gendleman Chief Executive Officer 602-722-1530 voice 1-888-577-8855 fax bgendleman@5amsolutions.com