Cambria Biosciences Receives $2.7 Million NIH Grant to Discover Novel Targets and Compounds for Mosquito Control.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

BIOWIRE2K

WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2002

Innovative Screening Technology May Yield New Products

to Control Mosquitoes That Transmit Malaria, West Nile Virus,

and Other Infectious Diseases

Cambria Biosciences announced today the receipt of a $2.7 million Cooperative Agreement grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to develop novel strategies to control the mosquito insect vectors that transmit malaria and other important human infectious diseases. The grant will be used by Cambria to format and implement novel screening assays based on Cambria's discoveries of how certain insecticides work at the molecular level, while leveraging the recently completed genome sequences of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito species that transmits the most serious form of the human malarial parasite.

Malaria, West Nile virus, and dengue fever are among the many infectious diseases transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. Although these mosquito-borne diseases are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and other tropical regions, they now represent an increasing public health threat in the United States as a result of increased international travel and spread of the mosquito species that transmit these diseases. Traditional insecticides such as DDT and pyrethroids are the main means of controlling disease-transmitting mosquitoes. However, mosquito control is imperiled by the emergence of insecticide resistance by mosquitoes and growing concerns regarding the safety and environmental impact of these traditional agents.

Cambria's award is one of the first made under a new National Institutes of Health Cooperative Agreement (U01) grants program to foster partnerships for novel therapeutic, diagnostic, and vector control strategies in infectious diseases. "We are pleased to leverage our expertise in applied neurogenetics to help identify better targets and lead compounds for significant public health threats," said Leo Liu, M.D., Cambria's President and Chief Scientific Officer, who formerly served on the Harvard Medical School faculty as a board-certified specialist in infectious diseases and tropical medicine.

In the course of the planned research, Cambria will partner with academic laboratories and Dow Agrosciences LLC, a well-established maker of agricultural pest control products. "Our successful proposal was based in part on progress in our collaborative relationship with Dow Agrosciences," said Dr. Scott Chouinard, the director of molecular biology at Cambria and the principal investigator named in the award. "Moving forward, we will use the cognate targets from mosquitoes, revealed by the recently published Anopheles genome, in novel high-throughput assays to identify selective insecticidal compounds with our collaborators at Dow Agrosciences."

Separately, Cambria Biosciences recently announced a three-year collaboration agreement with Dow Agrosciences to apply Cambria's technology to identify the mode of action and potential molecular target site of early-stage insecticidal compounds identified by Dow Agrosciences.

About Cambria Biosciences

Cambria Biosciences LLC is a drug discovery company dedicated to identifying the next generation of neurotherapeutics, medicines for treating neurological diseases. The Company's approach uses living genetic model systems that faithfully recapitulate disease processes to discover and advance promising leads for drug development. Cambria earns revenues from grants and corporate partnerships that leverage its technology platform for other applications, including public health and biodefense, agriculture, and animal health.