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ParAllele Press Release

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Nicholas J. Naclerio, Ph.D.
ParAllele BioScience

e-mail: 		BCC Partners
Michelle Corral

PARALLELE BIOSCIENCE AND BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE ANNOUNCE RESEARCH COLLABORATION

Collaboration to Discover Genetic Basis of Serious Cardiovascular Conditions

South San Francisco, CA, July 29, 2003 - ParAllele BioScience today announced the initiation of a research collaboration with the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) to discover the genetic basis of a specific class of congenital heart abnormalities that affect infants and children and may also increase the risk of heart valve and artery disease in the elderly.

Working with John W. Belmont, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Director of Baylor's Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic, ParAllele will utilize its proprietary single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping technology to scan hundreds of candidate genes to uncover genetic mutations that can lead to the occurrence of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction. This is a class of heart abnormalities with suspected genetic origins that cause death and disability in newborns, and also occurs in milder forms that can lead to heart valve infections or degeneration in later life. ParAllele has developed a suite of powerful single-tube assays, based on the company's "lab in a tube"(TM) approach, to conduct highly accurate, highly multiplexed SNP discovery, genotyping and variation scanning. As part of this collaboration, ParAllele will design custom reagents, perform genotyping and analyze the results. As part of this research effort, Baylor has already collected over one thousand samples from patients and their families and has carried out the clinical evaluations necessary to classify them. The study is being funded through Baylor by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. This is ParAllele's second project with Baylor, following the organizations' successful collaboration on the International HapMap Project.

"Baylor College of Medicine was among our first collaborators as part of the International Human HapMap project, and we are pleased by the opportunity to form a second collaboration with BCM," said Tom Willis, Ph.D., ParAllele's Founder and Chief Scientific Officer. "This cardiovascular research project is an example of the type of comprehensive genetic research capabilities that we can offer to the commercial and academic communities. Studies like these will demonstrate the value of our innovative approach to uncovering the genetic basis of complex diseases."

"We have been impressed with the scalability and accuracy of ParAllele's assays and the rapid progress we have experienced in collaborating with them on the HapMap project," said Dr. Belmont. "We have chosen ParAllele's technology over the alternatives because the high degree of multiplexing allows us to analyze twice as many SNPs per sample and to complete the study in half the time. This means maximizing the utilization of the patient DNA that we have collected and accelerates the pace at which we can conduct research."

About the Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic at Texas Children's Hospital
and Baylor College of Medicine
The Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic is a joint program of the Texas Children's Hospital Cardiology Clinic, Division of Cardiology, Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. The Clinic was started in 1998 to provide comprehensive evaluation and care for children and adolescents with genetic disorders affecting the heart and blood vessels. The clinic physicians include Drs. Jeff Towbin, Steve Neish, William Craigen, Stephanie Ware, and John Belmont and the clinic coordinator is Susan Fernbach, R.N. (). For more information about the clinic and its associated research projects visit www.cardiogene.org.

About ParAllele Bioscience

ParAllele BioScience is developing and commercializing new products and technologies that will accelerate healthcare breakthroughs. By harnessing biochemical processes, ParAllele is creating highly multiplexed, compact, scalable solutions for genetics research. The company's current offerings include solutions for SNP discovery, genotyping, and variation scanning. ParAllele's customers and partners include leading pharmaceutical companies, academic research centers, life science instrumentation companies and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The company was founded by a team of researchers from the Stanford Genome Technology Center and Uppsala University in 2001 and is presently headquartered in South San Francisco, California. Investors in the privately held company include Abingworth Management, Index Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) and Versant Ventures. For more information about ParAllele, please visit the company's website at: parallelebio.com.

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