Beyond Genomics Announces Research and Development Advisory Board Lead by Co-Chairs Arnold Levine, PhD and Jeffrey Friedman, MD, PhD.

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Beyond Genomics, Inc. today announced the formation of a Research and Development Advisory Board comprised of leading scientists with broad experience in the study of human disease, and the discovery and development of pharmaceutical products. Arnold Levine, PhD and Jeffrey Friedman, MD, PhD are co-chairs of the board. The company expects the Advisory Board to make active recommendations for the use of Beyond Genomics' proprietary Molecular Systems Biology platforms both for internal drug development programs and in research alliances with pharmaceutical company partners. The other members of the Advisory Board are: David Jackson, PhD; Jan van der Greef, PhD; Victor Dzau, MD; Marc Kirschner, PhD; Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD; and Christopher Sander, PhD.

"A systems approach to biology is inevitable. Drug researchers are increasingly coming to the conclusion that it is really the only way to understand the complexities of biology, whether we are talking about disease pathways, drug mechanisms or some other aspect." said Dr. Levine. "Beyond Genomics has been practicing molecular systems biology in an integrated fashion longer than any other entity I am aware of. The company is extremely well positioned to have a major impact on the way new drugs are developed. I expect to work closely with BG to help the company and its partners deliver new drugs for serious diseases with significant unmet medical needs."

Muzammil Mansuri, PhD, Beyond Genomics' Executive Chairman, said, "Doctors Friedman and Levine are leading a world-class group of scientific advisors to Beyond Genomics, each of whom brings a remarkable record of achievement. The combined skills and experiences of the board members add an important dimension to the company's molecular systems biology approach. This new board has been carefully assembled to include expertise across a broad range of diseases, drug therapies and research disciplines. All of these outstanding scientists are united, however, by one thing: the belief that systems biology will be the foundation for the next generation of major advances in drug discovery and development."

Arnold Levine, PhD, Co-Chairman

Dr. Levine is a Professor at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine; a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Center for Systems Biology; and former President, Rockefeller University. Before joining Rockefeller University in 1998, he was the Harry C. Weiss Professor of Life Sciences at Princeton University, where he founded the University's Molecular Biology Department and guided it through 12 years of dramatic growth. Prior to his work at Princeton, Dr. Levine was chairman of the Molecular Biology Department at SUNY/Stony Brook School of Medicine. Among his many accomplishments is the discovery of a protein molecule that inhibits the development of cancer tumors. Dr. Levine holds a PhD in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania and conducted post-doctoral work in virology at the California Institute of Technology. He is presently a member of the Board of Directors of the Applera Corporation and Infinity Pharmaceuticals.

Jeffrey Friedman, MD, PhD, Co-Chairman

Dr. Friedman is the Marilyn M. Simpson Professor and Director of the Starr Center for Human Genetics at Rockefeller University and an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research on the molecular mechanisms that regulate body weight and metabolism received national attention in 1994, when Dr. Friedman and his colleagues isolated the mouse ob gene, or fat gene, and its human homologue. His group subsequently showed that leptin, the protein encoded by the ob gene, decreases body weight of mice by reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure. Dr. Friedman received his BS and MD degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Albany Medical College. After completing a residency in internal medicine at Albany Medical College and entering a gastroenterology fellowship at Cornell University Medical College, he enrolled in the graduate program at Rockefeller, where he received his PhD in molecular biology. Dr. Friedman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Among his honors is the 2001 Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for distinguished achievement in metabolic research.

David Jackson, PhD, Senior Scientific Advisor

Dr. Jackson has over 30 years experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. While at the DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Company, Dr. Jackson headed the team that was responsible for development of anti-HIV drugs, including Sustiva(R), one of the world's top-selling anti-HIV drugs. While at DuPont and DuPont Merck, he played a central role in establishing four joint ventures or partnerships and served on the board of directors or management committee of each. During this time he also served as the head of drug discovery in the areas of infectious diseases, cancer, and molecular biology. Prior to DuPont and DuPont Merck, he served as an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Medical School and as head of research and development at three biotechnology companies. Dr. Jackson received his PhD from Stanford in molecular biology. As a post-doctoral fellow with Professor Paul Berg at Stanford, he was involved in the early development of recombinant DNA technology.

Jan van der Greef, PhD, Founder & Scientific Advisor

Dr. Jan van der Greef is Scientific Director of Systems Biology Research, Life Sciences, at Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) in the Netherlands. He is also Professor of Analytical Biosciences and co-founder of the Center for Medical Systems Biology at Leiden University at the Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research. Dr. van der Greef's current research interest is the development of systems biology, including novel proteomics technologies, metabolomics fingerprinting, and biostatistics, applied to the characterization of complex biological systems. Previously, as managing director of TNO Pharma from 1995 to 2003, he successfully developed an innovative business organization for pre-clinical and clinical development. Dr. van der Greef is also co-founder of Kiadis, focusing on high resolution screening platforms for natural products and orphan targets. His PhD was completed at the University of Amsterdam in the field of mass spectrometry. He is considered a pioneer in the field of liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LCMS), bodyfluid profiling and pattern recognition, and among the first to develop single cell profiling by mass spectrometry.

Victor Dzau, MD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Dzau is the Chancellor for Health Affairs at Duke University and president and chief executive officer of the Duke University Health System. Dr. Dzau was formerly Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and chairman of the Department of Medicine, physician-in-chief and director of research at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. At Harvard, he sat on numerous committees and advisory boards, including the Executive Committee of The Academy at Harvard Medical School and the board of Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science (USA) and the European Academy of Science and Arts. Previous Chairman of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cardiovascular Disease Advisory Committee, he has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. In 1999, he became Editor-in-Chief for Physiological Genomics. A founding member of the Society of Vascular Medicine and Biology, Dr. Dzau was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Vascular Medicine and Biology. After receiving his MD from McGill University in Montreal, Dr. Dzau did his postgraduate training at Harvard Medical School.

Marc Kirschner, PhD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Kirschner is founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health and as President of the American Society for Cell Biology. Dr. Kirschner's laboratory investigates three broad, diverse areas: regulation of the cell cycle, the role of cytoskeleton in cell morphogenesis, and mechanisms of establishing the basic vertebrate body plan. In 1993, Dr. Kirschner arrived at Harvard Medical School and served as the founding chair of the Department of Cell Biology until September 2003. Before coming to Boston, he was Professor for fifteen years at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kirschner graduated from Northwestern University in 1966 and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Following postdoctoral research at Berkeley and at the University of Oxford, he was appointed an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in 1972.

Douglas Lauffenburger, PhD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Lauffenburger is Uncas & Helen Whitaker Professor of Bioengineering in the Biological Engineering (BE) Division, Biology Department, and Chemical Engineering Department, and is a Member of the Center for Cancer Research, Center for Biomedical Engineering, and Biotechnology Process Engineering Center at MIT. He serves as Director of the BE Division and on the Executive Committee of the MIT Computational & Systems Biology Initiative. Dr. Lauffenburger's PhD is in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. His major research interests are in receptor-mediated cell communication and intracellular signal transduction for cell cue/signal/response relationships important in pathophysiology with application to drug discovery and development. Professor Lauffenburger has served as a consultant or scientific advisory board member for numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and has served as President of the Biomedical Engineering Society and on the Advisory Council for the National Institute for General Medical Sciences at the NIH.

Chris Sander, PhD, Scientific Advisor

Dr. Sander is Head of the Computational Biology Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and tri-institutional professor at Rockefeller and Cornell Universities. He is internationally acknowledged as a founder of computational biology, an emerging discipline that aims to solve important problems in biology using techniques of mathematics, physics, engineering, and computer science. His principal research interests are in computational and systems biology, including predictive simulations of biological processes, integrated molecular profiling of disease states, gene regulation by small RNAs and structural genomics. He is a leader in community efforts to create an open-source information resource for biological pathways. Previously, Dr. Sander served as Chief Information Science Officer with Millennium Pharmaceuticals, as Senior Scientist at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England, as founding chair of the department of Biocomputing at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. He is editor of Bioinformatics, a leading journal in computational biology, and currently an advisor to the Protein Structure Initiative of the National Institutes of Health and the IBM Deep Computing Initiative. Dr. Sander was trained at the universities of Berlin, Berkeley, Copenhagen and Stony Brook and his PhD is in theoretical physics.

About Beyond Genomics

Founded in 2000, Beyond Genomics is an emerging biotechnology company that applies its proprietary Molecular Systems Biology platforms to develop novel therapeutics and biomarkers. Current approaches such as genomics and proteomics focus on one aspect of biological systems at a time. Rather than simplifying the inherent complexity of biological processes that underlie human diseases or that govern drug responses, Beyond Genomics has pioneered the creation of Molecular Phenotypes(TM) to enable biological research at the systems level. BG develops Molecular Phenotypes(TM) unique to each disease and drug category by performing multiple measurements on complex biological samples, including metabolites, proteins and gene transcripts, and combining these data sets together with clinical information. Tracking changes in Molecular Phenotypes(TM) can improve multiple aspects of pharmaceutical discovery and development, including drug safety and efficacy, drug response, and the etiology of disease. BG's systems biology platform integrates state-of-the-art technologies in proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics. The company has also developed a proprietary BioSystematics(TM) data integration and knowledge management platform that generates connections, correlations, and relationships among thousands of measurable molecular components. Beyond Genomics has partnerships with several pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and AstraZeneca. www.beyondgenomics.com.