Press Release

3rd Millennium releases version 2.0 of its award winning ARDAS™ software

Waltham, MA - March 15, 2006 -- 3rd Millennium, a leading bioinformatics firm, announced today the release of a new version of its award winning ARDAS™ software. The Array Repository and Data Analysis System provides a complete and fully integrated solution to microarray data acquisition, management, and analysis. ARDAS includes a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for managing the laboratory processes and the collection of data from 2-color spotted arrays, an Analysis Information Management System (AIMS) that integrates a sophisticated workflow engine with computational tools for the analysis of 2-color and Affymetrix data, and a data warehouse for storing and organizing both raw and normalized data sets.

The ARDAS™ LIMS records RNA extraction, RNA concentration, RNA labeling, hybridization of labeled RNA to arrays, scanning of arrays, printing arrays from oligo or cDNA libraries, and post-processing of arrays. The system also includes a warehouse that provides a simple yet powerful model to annotate samples and arrays (compatible with the MIAME standard) with the relevant biological, analytical, and methodological context through predefined and user-defined parameters. The system also includes analytical workflows based on R and BioConductor for the normalization and quality control, and linear modeling of Affymetrix and 2-color spotted data. It includes many plots and graphs including MA plots, intensity distributions and histograms, and image maps of arrays.

"Unlike other products that focus mostly on the analysis of microarray data, ARDAS supports the complete life-cycle of microarray workflows. The workflows include the tracking of samples and hybridizations in the LIMS, the loading and parsing of files in a scalable and reliable Oracle warehouse, the normalization of arrays, and the analysis of the data in an iterative way" said Dr. Roland Carel, 3rd Millennium's Head of Informatics.

"We are pleased to offer our award winning microarray software as a packaged product to the research and development community. ARDAS is an off-the-shelf enterprise system that requires no customization and we are offering it at a low price that is comparable to the price of desktop packages" said Ousama Shamma, president of 3rd Millennium.

Additional Information on 3rd Millennium
3rd Millennium, Inc, located in Waltham, MA is the leading provider of custom informatics systems, management consulting services, and packaged software products for the life sciences. Since 1994, the company helped both public and private life science institutions manage, plan, specify, design, build, and integrate informatics systems to support their research and development programs. 3rd Millennium provides its clients with outstanding value by combining deep knowledge of life science R&D, cutting edge informatics technologies, a highly efficient methodology, and an extensive portfolio of designs, code libraries, frameworks, and implemented systems. Their staff consists of Ph.D. level scientists and senior software engineers that work closely with their clients in tightly integrated teams. They have an unmatched record of completing projects on-time and on-budget while exceeding user expectations. Additional information can be found at http://www.3rdmill.com