Company Will Also Host Biomarker Information Session
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Icoria,
Inc. (Nasdaq: ICOR), an integrated systems biology company, announced today
that it will present three abstracts next month at the Society of Toxicology's
44th Annual Meeting (SOT) in New Orleans. The presentations will feature the
use of metabolomics to identify biomarkers associated with toxicology and
demonstrate Icoria's use of systems biology to assess liver injury. The
company will also host an information session at SOT entitled "Advanced
Biomarkers on the Critical Path to Drug Discovery."
"These studies provide strong evidence that metabolomics offers an
important source of biomarkers for detecting exposure to toxins and monitoring
disease progression," said Thomas Colatsky, Ph.D., Vice President Health Care
Research. "By using metabolomics and systems biology to better understand and
predict toxicology, Icoria can help drug developers avoid drugs with serious
side effects and long term toxicity."
The first of Icoria's three abstracts, "Use of Metabolomics to Identify
Brevotoxin Exposure," is a poster paper scheduled for presentation the
afternoon of Monday, March 7. The paper is the work of a team from Icoria and
the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and reports a panel of
metabolomic biomarkers that signal exposure to red tide toxins.
Icoria is also scheduled to present its poster paper "Evaluating
Toxicology at a Systems Level using Coherent Analysis of Large-scale Data
Streams" during the Monday afternoon session. The paper describes the study
of liver injury based on coherent analysis of genomic, metabolomic and
histomorphometric data streams.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 9, Icoria will present the poster paper
"Comparison of Cellular Models for Assessing Liver Toxicity," which discusses
predictive toxicology based on in vitro assays.
Icoria's gene expression profiling data was also used as described in
"Profiles of Global Gene Expression in Ionizing Radiation," an abstract
scheduled for presentation on the morning of Monday, March 7.
Biomarkers Information Session
Icoria is hosting a biomarkers information session on Wednesday, March 9,
at 9:45 a.m. in room 215 of the convention center. Alan Higgins, Ph.D.,
Senior Director, Investigational Medicine and Imran Shah, Ph.D., Head,
Computational Systems Biology, will lead a workshop on harnessing the power of
biomarkers to accelerate drug discovery and development efforts. The session
is open to all SOT attendees.
"One of the topics we will discuss is how to combine statistical and
biological insight to guide the identification of biomarkers and related
mechanisms," said Shah. "High throughput biology generates masses of data,
and we have proprietary computational discovery methods for reducing the
complexity of these data sets to make biologically sound decisions with a high
degree of confidence."
Icoria has filed a series of patent applications relating to novel
computational methods and analytical tools designed to combine and mine
multiple streams of data for prioritizing biomarkers, targets, and other
critical information. Icoria's development of such data coherence tools is
supported in part by an Advanced Technology Program grant from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology.
About Icoria
Icoria, Inc. is a biotech company dedicated to deciphering the complexity
of biological processes through the application of systems biology to identify
biomarkers for drug discovery and development, diagnostics and to develop
novel agrichemicals. Icoria has major contracts with the National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences, the Monsanto Company and Pioneer Hi-Bred
International (a subsidiary of DuPont). Icoria also has a major grant from
the National Institute of Standards & Technology's Advanced Technology
Program. For more information, visit http://www.icoria.com .
This press release contains forward-looking statements including but not
limited to the Company's expectations for its systems biology platform and
biomarker discovery efforts. Such forward-looking statements are based on
management's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks,
factors and uncertainties that may cause actual results, events and
performance to differ materially from those referred to in the forward-looking
statements. These risks, factors and uncertainties include, but are not
limited to Icoria's early stage of development, history of net losses,
technological and product development uncertainties, reliance on research
collaborations, uncertainty of additional funding and ability to protect its
patents and proprietary rights. Certain of these and other risks are
identified in Icoria's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December
31, 2003 and in its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended
September 30, 2004, each filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Company does not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements
after the date of this release to conform these statements to actual results
or to changes in our expectations, except as may be required by law.
SOURCE Icoria, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.icoria.com
CONTACT:
Media-Public Relations of Icoria, Inc.,
+1-919-425-2999; or Brian Ritchie or Mark Vincent of EURO RSCG
Life NRP, +1-212-845-4200
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