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03-09-08 10:16

LIFE Biosystems and the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) Collaborate to Advance the Clinical Application of Information Extraction Technologies.

Collaboration to provide important innovations in the field of clinical data extraction and therapeutic system modelling.

Heidelberg, Germany — September 3, 2008 — LIFE Biosystems GmbH announced today that it has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI). As part of this agreement, LIFE has licensed the ProMinerTM entity recognition software, which will become an integral part of LIFE’s text-mining infrastructure. In addition, both parties will work to collaboratively advance the development of information extraction algorithms in the clinical research domain. These efforts will focus on the identification and modelling of therapeutically relevant information from clinical/lexical data, with particular emphasis on drug mode of action and clinical outcomes.

"We have been extremely impressed by the advances made by SCAI in the field of biological information extraction" stated Dr. David Jackson, Director of in silico Discovery at LIFE Biosystems. “The synergies created as a result of this collaboration will enable us to efficiently bridge the gap between the clinical and molecular information domains. In so doing, we aim to achieve a new level of innovation in the analysis and application of patient derived data”.

”The collaboration with LIFE Biosystems fits perfectly with our overall strategy to further develop our text-mining technologies for application areas beyond biology” says Dr. Juliane Fluck, Head of the Text Mining Group at Fraunhofer SCAI. “The domain of clinical information requires dedicated solutions for information extraction and the collaboration with LIFE Biosystems will help us to develop specialized ProMinerTM functionalities supporting mining in unstructured clinical data“.

About LIFE Biosystems

LIFE Biosystems is an in silico-driven discovery company dedicated to the field of predictive medicine. Working together the biopharmaceutical industry and comprehensive cancer centers, we strive to address the key issues facing clinical research and therapeutic development today. As expert practitioners of in silico discovery in molecular medicine, our goal is to transform patient information and molecular data into a new level of clinical discovery, intellectual property and ultimately, patient benefit. For additional information about the company, please visit: http://www.lifebiosystems.com

About the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute.

The Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) is renowned in the field of text-mining and information extraction in the life sciences. Excellence in biological named entity recognition has been independently established through successful participation in the two BioCreative text-mining competitions and through several high ranking publications in the field. Two widely recognized software solutions for the advanced analysis of bibliographic information have been developed to date: ProMinerTM and ChemoCRTM. ProMinerTM is a specialized tool for named entity recognition in biology, medicine and chemistry, while ChemoCRTM is a new development, capable of translating depictions of chemical structures into explicit chemical nomenclatures.

For additional information about the Department of Bioinformatics please visit: www.scai.fraunhofer.de/bio

The department is also widely recognized for its annual text mining symposium: www.scai.fraunhofer.de/tms08.html

For further information please contact:

Media contact:

Tracy C. Donahue

TMC Communications

Tel: +1 (857) 919-9975

Email: tracycdonahue@msn.com

LIFE Biosystems GmbH:

Dr. David Jackson,

Poststr 34,

69117, Heidelberg