August 15, 2002, Mountain View, California – SurroMed, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The funding will support the development of SurroMed’s affinity mass tag technologies and their application towards the broad scale analysis of biological samples by mass spectrometry for the discovery of biomarkers of cancer and other diseases.

"A major technical obstacle to mass spectrometric analysis of biological samples is sample preparation," said Christopher Becker, Ph.D., SurroMed’s director of chemistry. "Our affinity mass tags offer the opportunity to significantly enhance sensitivity and advance structure and function-specific proteomic analysis, further enabling SurroMed’s comprehensive biomarker and target discovery focus."

The technology development supported by the NCI will enable efficient fractionation and capture of proteins and peptides. By combining this technology with advanced mass spectrometric methods, SurroMed plans to achieve a significantly increased specificity and dynamic range in differential protein analysis. Importantly, this will facilitate differential profiling of protein samples from three, or more, closely related but distinct physiological states, including normal, diseased, and drug-treated individuals as part of SurroMed’s integrated biomarker discovery program.

"We are pleased to receive this NCI grant to develop our mass tag technologies. Innovative reagents have historically driven breakthroughs in biomedical science," commented Gordon Ringold, Chief Executive Officer of SurroMed. "This is yet another example of SurroMed scientists’ ability to gain non-dilutive funding in support of our business focus."

About SurroMed, Inc.
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, SurroMed uses its integrated phenotyping and biological marker discovery platform to better understand the root causes of disease and the factors underlying patient-to-patient variations in disease presentation, progression and response to therapy. Discoveries arising from its research will enable improved, cost-efficient discovery and development of therapeutic and diagnostic products. SurroMed's phenotyping and biological marker discovery platform incorporates advanced proprietary technologies for profiling and analysis of hundreds of immune cell populations, proteins and low-molecular-weight organic molecules (such as sugars, peptides or lipids) in small volumes of blood and/or other biological samples, while maintaining complete patient confidentiality. By capturing and analyzing enormous amounts of clinical and biological information in a massively parallel fashion to identify useful biological markers, SurroMed plans to enable the precise diagnosis and effective treatment of disease.

Contacts:

SurroMed, Inc. Noonan/Russo Communications, Inc.
August J. Moretti Ian McConnell, Ph.D
CFO and General Counsel Senior Account Executive
(650) 230-1564 (415) 677-4455 ext. 233
email: [email protected] email:[email protected]