Press Release

3rd Millennium Receives Phase II SBIR Contract to Continue Development of Innovative Bioinformatics System for the U.S. Department of Defense

CAMBRIDGE, MA - January 28, 2003 -- 3rd Millennium, a leading bioinformatics consulting firm, announced today that is has received a $730,000 Phase II SBIR contract from the Department of Defense (DOD). The contract is to develop a next generation microarray information system to support infectious disease research within the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command. 3rd Millennium's receipt of this second phase of this SBIR grant, in a competitive field, reflects the successful completion of its Phase I work for the U.S. Army.

In Phase II of this project, 3rd Millennium will create a customizable informatics platform that overcomes the deficiencies in current microarray systems by integrating an expression database with a laboratory information management system (LIMS) and a set of analysis pipelines. The platform is intended to be an informatics resource for the DOD's Biomedical Technology Area program in Infectious Disease of Military Importance.

"Our Phase II work builds on the success of our Phase I effort, which created an extensible platform to allow researchers to store Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME)-style information about the biology of their samples and results of their expression experiments in a web-accessible, searchable database. In Phase II we will add informatics pipelines to the platform to allow researchers to analyze their expression data in a statistically rigorous fashion by leveraging the design of the experiment, the biology of the samples, and the information recorded in the LIMS," said Jack Pollard Jr., Ph.D., 3rd Millennium's Principal Investigator on the grant. "By coupling a LIMS to an expression database and a set of customizable analysis pipelines, our platform will aid researchers in drawing sound conclusions from their expression data."

"Our selection for this SBIR contract speaks to the proven ability of our scientists and software engineers to come up with innovative, practical, broadly applicable solutions to meet key drug discovery needs, in this case for advanced microarray informatics systems," said Richard Dweck, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of 3rd Millennium. "This system will be the first to track and integrate critical experimental and analysis information-providing researchers with extraordinary insights into the specific circumstances affecting their experiments. In doing this work, we will be able to leverage extensively the deep domain knowledge and technical resources we have developed through years of custom system development we have done in this industry."

3rd Millennium, Inc., located in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a leading bioinformatics consultancy that works with pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic clients on a project basis to design and develop software systems that support critical R&D activities. 3rd Millennium's expertise is in biological data integration, analysis pipeline systems, knowledge management systems and custom LIMS. The company has extensive experience developing systems for expression profiling, gene analysis and annotation, proteomics, and biological pathway modeling. Additional information can be found at http://www.3rdmill.com.

The views, opinions and/or findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy or decision unless so designated by other documentation.