| Jack Bowie |
Apelon, Inc. |
VP,
Sales & Marketing |
jbowie@
apelon.com
|
(203)
431-2530 Opt. 1, ext. 150 |
| Barbara
Lynch |
KNB Communications, LLC. |
|
knbpr@apelon.com
|
(212)
505-2441 ext. 126 |
APELON PROVIDES TERMINOLOGY INTEGRATION
FOR ARDAIS CORPORATION
Leading Biotech Firm Selects Vocabulary Content and Tools For Resources
Designed To Speed Drug Research and Development
RIDGEFIELD, CT – December 4, 2001 – Apelon,
the world's largest supplier of medical terminology software and
services, will supply terminology development and integration tools
to Ardais Corporation, the leading provider of clinical genomics
technologies, products and services designed to accelerate drug discovery
and development.
Ardais will use Apelon's Terminology Development Environment (TDE)
tool to create a new ontology of concepts unique to human clinical
materials classification and management. Ardais will also utilize
Apelon's Distributed Terminology System (DTS) real time servers to
link this data to Ardais' existing applications. Researchers will
then be able to associate allele expression in tissues and molecular
level genomics data with clinical samples and clinical information
about those samples, in order to identify and validate potential
biological targets that may lead to new therapeutics to treat disease.
The pharmaceutical and biotech industries invest over $45 billion
each year in research and development. Despite this huge investment,
the industry's success rate has been insufficient to address such
major diseases as cancer, heart disease and arthritis among others.
One reason for this low productivity has been the difficulty of identifying
the correct "target" or gene that is important to the origins
and progression of a disease and then designing a drug that safely
and effectively addresses that target.
"Apelon is very pleased that our terminology technology is
being applied in such an important area," said Apelon's President
Stephen Coady. "We are proud to help Ardais close the gap between
gene discovery and medicine."
Martin Ferguson, Ardais Vice President - Bioinformatics noted: "In
order to help biopharmaceutical companies to increase the productivity
of their discovery programs, Ardais provides the tools that enable
researchers to conduct clinically relevant, statistically based experiments
for target identification and validation. Towards that end, we need
to integrate bioinformatics with clinical informatics on an unprecedented
scale. Apelon's TDE gives us the best toolkit with which to create
and manage the structured vocabularies used to annotate our clinical
database and prepare those data for genomics-based biomedical research."
About Apelon
Apelon is the world's largest supplier of medical terminology tools
and services. Leading healthcare organizations use Apelon software
to improve the quality, comparability and accessibility of clinical
information. Apelon offers terminology development software, run
time vocabulary servers, concept-based indexing and retrieval products,
and corresponding consultant services. Corporate Web site: www.Apelon.com.
About Ardais
Ardais Corporation, founded in 1999, is a privately-held clinical
genomics company headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts. Clinical
genomics is a multidisciplinary approach to correlate molecular
changes, including differences in patterns of gene expression,
with the characteristics of actual human disease, to accelerate
the discovery and validation of targets for development of new
diagnostics and therapeutics. Ardais' mission is to accelerate
drug discovery by enabling a new generation of clinically relevant,
statistically-based experimental capabilities on a previously unimaginable
scale. Through collaborations with biopharmaceutical companies
and medical institutions, Ardais applies its human disease-based
technology platform, integrated expertise and tissue collection
infrastructure to advance its partners' clinical discovery programs.
The Ardais BIGRTM Library nd suite of proprietary bioinformatics
tools provide academic and industrial researchers with access to
tens of thousands of research-quality clinical materials and associated
information in unique formats for research. Additional information
is available at www.Ardais.com.
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