BioSeek, Inc. announced today that the company has been awarded a two-year Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant will support the expansion of BioSeek's Biological Multiplexed Activity Profiling (BioMAP^TM) technology for compound validation and prioritization in human primary cell-based inflammatory disease models.

"We are excited that the NIH has recognized the practical value of BioSeek's unique approach to systems biology," commented Dr. Eugene Butcher, Professor, Department of Pathology, Stanford University, a consultant on the project and chair of BioSeek's Scientific Advisory Board, "This quantitative approach will provide enormous benefit throughout the drug discovery process, from target validation and compound selection to clinical indication selection and trial design."

Advances in genomics, combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening have increased the need for rapid and biologically relevant methods to validate and prioritize lead compounds for new medicine development. BioSeek's BioMAP^TM systems incorporate primary human cells in complex activated states, relevant to human disease biology. The technology harnesses the informational content and processing power of primary human cell systems, in high throughput formats, and enables BioSeek to test the effects of compoundsand genes on human cell function, disease mechanisms and potential toxicity at early stages in the discovery process. With support from the NIH grant, BioSeek will expand its database of drug activity profiles in BioMAP^TM systemsfor inflammation to improve the selection of drug candidates, and the ability to predict drug behavior in humans. BioMAP technology will be applied in the granted study to develop a database of biological function profiles of a large number of approved and experimental compouds.

About BioSeek
BioSeek is improving the success rate of pharmaceutical research and development by integrating human biology from the earliest stages of drug discovery onward. The company's BioMAP^® Systems incorporate predictive primary human cell-based disease models that generate uniquely informative activity profiles of each potential drug, assisting in the selection and development of new drug candidates. BioSeek is leveraging BioMAP^® Systems technology in collaborations to enhance the productivity of its pharmaceutical partners' pipelines, and in the company's internal discovery programs.