Acurian's Patient Panel Expands to 12 Million Members; Panel Increase Provides Patient Boon to Sponsors Seeking Clinical Trial Participants for Studies in Chronic, Ambulatory Indications.

HORSHAM, Pa. -- Acurian, Inc., the leader in direct-to-patient recruitment and recruitment management technology, announced today that its proprietary patient panel has doubled since January 2004. The opted-in panel now contains over 12 million people in the U.S. who are actively seeking information about clinical trials and emerging medical therapies.

The majority of the panel is comprised of people suffering from chronic, ambulatory conditions including diabetes, asthma, insomnia, overactive bladder, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, anxiety, depression and many more. All patients have explicitly requested to be notified when new health information becomes available or a clinical trial protocol matches their self-reported patient profile.

"The doubling of our patient panel is a significant milestone for Acurian, but also for our customers," said Dr. Richard Malcolm, CEO of Acurian. "Capacity is one of the most important patient recruitment success factors, especially when you consider the attrition that can occur as patients move from referral to consent to randomization. Our sponsor customers rely on Acurian to have suitable patient volume around their investigator sites to either jumpstart enrollment at study inception, or close enrollment when patient recruitment is at an impasse."

According to Dr. Malcolm, the panel's significant growth also enables Acurian to refine its approach to patient outreach. "As standard practice, we only outreach to panelists who have the targeted condition and who live close to a participating site," Malcolm explained. "With additional patient volume, however, we can overlay predictive modeling techniques against robust, indication-specific data sets and identify panelists who are most apt to respond to a trial invitation. This predictability enables us to lower our own recruitment costs and subsequently pass the savings along to our customers."

Currently, 11 different sponsors are utilizing Acurian's patient panel across 36 protocols. Malcolm expects the numbers to rise in the fourth quarter and well into next year. "Customer demand for our patient panel shows no signs of slowing down," Malcolm indicated. "Our goal is to meet that demand by continuing to source new patients and by joining forces with other companies dedicated to clinical trial awareness."

For information about joining Acurian's patient panel, visit http://www.acurian.com/patient. Sponsors wanting more information about Acurian's patient recruitment services can visit http://www.acurian.com/sponsor.

About Acurian

Acurian is a leading provider of clinical trial patient recruitment solutions for the life sciences industry. Through its proprietary patient panel and centralized recruitment management platform, Acurian is able to identify, contact, prescreen, and refer potential trial participants quickly and affordably. Since 1998, Acurian has helped accelerate more than 180 clinical trials for over 30 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including 18 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world. Acurian's investors include Euclid SR Partners, ProQuest Investments, JP Morgan Partners, CDP Capital Technology Ventures, & Merck Capital Ventures. Additional information about Acurian is available at http://www.acurian.com.

Acurian is a trademark of Acurian, Inc. All other names and terms are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.