Hyderabad, India – 9th December 2004:  Ocimum Biosolutions, a leading provider of Innovative Bioinformatics solutions and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), announced that they have formed a strategic alliance with Genome Exploration Inc of USA. This alliance was announced at seminar “Advances in Gene Expression Studies” co-hosted by Ocimum Biosolutions and Genome Explorations on 7th December 04.

As part of this alliance, Ocimum Biosolutions will take care of Genome Explorations’ clients from India, wanting to get their Microarray profiling done for their gene expression studies. Initially for 3-4 months Ocimum will send these samples to Genome Explorations’ facility at Memphis in USA. At a later stage Genome Explorations plans set up a Microarray profiling facility here in India in collaboration with Ocimum Biosolutions.

Genome Explorations’ founder and CEO Dr Divyen Patel said on this occasion, “It is a pleasure to be able to serve proficient scientists here in my own country. I am glad at this partnership and hope that Genome Explorations’ state-of-the-art microarray facility along with Ocimum’s expertise in this area will greatly benefit our researchers”.

Ocimum’s CEO Anuradha Acharya remarked, “It gives us great pleasure as we move a step forward in serving our very own scientists in India. Now Researchers and other commercial organizations in India wanting to get these highly sophisticated Microarray profiling done, can get it done here in India itself and that too at a very cost effective price. We are very pleased with this partnership and hope that it will mutually impart significant value to Genome Explorations and Ocimum Biosolutions”.

Financial details of the partnership was not disclosed.

About Seminar “Advances in Gene Expression Studies”

Organized by Ocimum Biosolutions and Genome Explorations, this extremely successful interactive meet was aimed at familiarizing attendees with the latest developments in Gene Expression Analysis and tools that can revolutionize conventional research methods. This meet took place in four different cities – New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. Many a renowned scientists from across the country took part in this seminar including Dr AR Reddy – University of Hyderabad, Dr Malabika Sarker – Institute of Bioinformatics of Bangalore, Dr Beena Pillai – IGIB, Dr Deepak Modi – National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, Girija N G – AstraZeneca India Pvt. Ltd, Dr. Sunita Saxena – Institute of Pathology ICMR, Dr. Jatin Nagpal – Ranbaxy, Dr. Dipika Mohanty & Dr. Kanjaksha Gosh from Institute of Immunohaemotology. Representatives from many a well known companies and institutions like Dr Reddy’s Lab, CDFD, IGIB, IOB, etc attended the seminar.

About Genome Explorations Inc

Genome Explorations Inc. was founded by Dr. Divyen H. Patel to provide academic and industrial institutes with a ‘Complete Solution’ for gene expression profiling. Dr. Patel initiated and ran the Affymetrix GeneChip processing core at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The finding’s from one of the many studies conducted through his core was described in a seminal study on the cover of Cancer Cell (Cancer Cell Vol. 1 133-143 March 2002). The study showed for the first time that microarray technology could be used to enhance diagnosis of pediatric leukemia and could also be used to evaluate prognostic outcome. The extensive experience gained through working with scores of investigators on many varying projects has made Genome Explorations Inc. the number one choice for Investigators worldwide.

For more information on Genome Explorations visit www.genome-explorations.com

About Ocimum Biosolutions

Ocimum Biosolutions is an ISO 9001:2000 certified life sciences contract R&D Company that provides cost-effective customized contract research services and next generation bioinformatics tools & services in the area of genomics, proteomics and laboratory information management (LIMS) for Biotech and Pharmaceutical industry. The company’s products include: (1) Sequence Analysis package — Genchek™; (2) Gene Optimization tool — Optgene™; (3) siRNA design — iRNAchek™ ; (4) Microarray Data Analysis tool — Genowiz™ ;(5) A generic LIMS for analytical lab — Bioracker™ and (6) LIMS for pre-clinical research — Toxchek™. 7) A LIMS targeted towards the Pharmaceutical industry – Pharmatracker™.

For more information on Ocimum Biosolutions visit www.ocimumbio.com or contact bdm@ocimumbio.com.