Ribonomics Receives $150,000 from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center

Company Adds to Pathway Analysis and Chemogenomics Technologies

February 3, 2004

Durham, NC-February 3, 2004-Ribonomics, Inc. has been awarded $150,000 by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. The grant was awarded in recognition of the high commercial potential and scientific merit of the Company’s functional clustering technology, and will be used to complete commercial development of the Ribonomics Analysis System (RAS™).

RAS™ is a novel, powerful technology that allows the physical isolation and characterization of functionally related genes in vitro and in vivo. The Company’s technology exploits the cell’s own organizational scheme for protein expression to reveal novel functional relationships between genes, elucidate new regulatory links among pathways, and assign cellular function to uncharacterized genes. In contrast, current systems biology methods are bioinformatically driven, predicting pathway participants based on mining of existing data.

“The pharmaceutical industry is still learning how to deal with the vast amounts of gene expression data acquired through microarray studies. Knowledge management and modeling techniques are very useful; however, the power of all of the gene expression data cannot be fully realized without understanding its organization and, more importantly, its relation to disease,” said R. Bentley Cheatham, Ph.D., Director of Biology. “Combining our RAS™ technologies with existing genomics technologies will enable a highly focused exploitation of gene expression leading to identification of cellular pathway components and novel therapeutic targets.”

This funding will enable Ribonomics to expand the technology for defining regulatory processes important to a given disease or biological process. “We work with pharma customers to better understand the effects of their drug candidates” commented Christopher B. Kelly, President of Ribonomics, Inc. “Customers want to start where they want to start. This development enables us to use our technologies with any gene of interest.”

Ribonomics, Inc. (www.ribonomics.com), a privately held biotechnology company in Durham, NC, is applying proprietary technologies to the drug discovery process. Ribonomics is developing next-generation drug discovery and development tools for deployment in conjunction with pharmaceutical partners. The Company’s RAS™ technology provides high-content analyses for target identification, prioritization and validation. The Company’s RiboLert™ technology provides a cost effective and flexible screening capability to quickly ascertain the efficacy, toxicity and off-target effects of drug candidates.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center is a private, non-profit corporation established by the state's General Assembly in 1981 as the nation's first state-sponsored biotechnology initiative. Its mission is to provide long-term economic benefit to North Carolina through support of biotechnology research, development and commercialization statewide. For more information about the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, visit www.ncbiotech.org.

Contact:

Christopher B. Kelly, President
Ribonomics, Inc.
3908 Patriot Drive
Durham, NC 27703
(919) 544-1023 x2117
chris.kelly@ribonomics.com