Biovista Inc. Receives Prestigious EU Grant to use its Drug Repositioning Platform for Personalized Medicine

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia and ATHENS, Greece, May 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Biovista Inc. announced today that it's EU affiliate has been awarded a prestigious grant worth $0.5 million, for research and development in the area of personalized medicine. The "p-medicine" project is a four-year, 13.3 million Euro co-funded effort under the European Community's 7th Framework Programme that aims to develop new tools, infrastructure and VPH (Virtual Physiological Human) models in order to help accelerate the emergence of personalized medicine.

Within this project Biovista will use its Clinical Outcomes Search Space (COSS) platform and its unique multi-dimensional profiling capabilities for the purpose of identifying new treatments that reflect patients' individual pathophysiological characteristics.

Dr. Andreas Persidis, Biovista CEO stated, "We are glad to have been awarded with our colleagues this prestigious contract through the highly competitive mechanism of EU R&D projects. It is a testament to the importance of Biovista's R&D work and past performance of this international consortium of research, academic and commercial organizations." "Personalized medicine is currently a challenge for the industry but also an important emerging requirement for the global healthcare system. We are confident that our drug repositioning expertise combined with clinical and related data that will be easily integrated and interchangeable via the p-medicine infrastructure can move us in the right direction," he added.

"We are extremely happy to have access to Biovista's drug repositioning expertise and look forward to experimenting with the COSS drug repositioning platform," said Professor Dr. Norbert Graf, director of the Clinic for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology of the University Clinic of Saarland, Germany and Technical Manager of the p-medicine project. "Our specific interest at the University Clinic of Saarland is Wilms tumor, the most common kidney cancer in children. While significant advances have been achieved in the last few years, we are still facing challenges in the areas of resistant disease to conventional chemotherapy where new and intelligent approaches are needed. Biovista has identified potential biomarkers for this disease and we are looking forward to continuing this work with them within p-medicine," he added.

Additional information on p-medicine can be found at the official project site (http://www.p-medicine.eu/).

About Biovista Inc.

Biovista is a privately held biotechnology company that develops a deep mechanistic understanding of how drugs, diseases and adverse events interact and uses this understanding to find customized solutions for treating disease and to find novel uses for existing drugs. Biovista is developing its own drug pipeline in multiple indications and is collaborating with the FDA on the prediction of adverse events, as well as with biopharmaceutical companies on indication expansion and de-risking of their portfolios. Additional information about Biovista can be found at http://www.biovista.com

    Company contact:

    Andreas Persidis, Ph.D.
    CEO Biovista Inc.
    +30-210-9629848
    [email protected]

    Media contacts:

    Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc
    +1-212-827-0020

    Andrew Mielach
    [email protected]

    or

    Farrell Denby
    [email protected]

SOURCE Biovista