Icoria, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICOR), a biotechnology company, announced today that Agilent Technologies has been approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP) to partner with Icoria in its continuing work on an $11.7 million ATP grant. The grant was originally awarded in June of 2002 to Icoria and its initial partner, LION bioscience AG, but LION has since withdrawn from participation and has now been replaced by Agilent. The grant remains the largest ever awarded by the ATP in the area of bioinformatics. The goal of this grant is to support the development of a Target Assessment Technologies Suite (TATS) for the improved discovery and validation of targets for product development in the pharmaceutical and life sciences.

In addition to substantial capabilities in software engineering and commercialization, Agilent brings to the agreement a data association framework called Agilent Synapsia Informatics Workbench that provides scientists with the ability to better understand and utilize vast amounts of genomic, proteomic, toxicologic, and drug efficacy data. The framework will be further enhanced to support integrated biological research with funding from this grant. Agilent’s software development capabilities match well with Icoria’s systems biology measurement technologies and data coherence analysis platform to address the goals of this grant, including the development of a commercializable software product.

“This agreement expands our long-standing relationship with Agilent and not only provides superior technology in the form of systems biology informatics tools, but adds commercialization potential that was not previously present,” said Thomas J. Colatsky, Ph.D., Vice President of Human Health Research at Icoria. “We look forward to working with Agilent in the ongoing development of important new technologies that enable scientists to gain greater insight into the development of safer and more effective medications.”

“This grant is a true validation of the substantial scope of our software development capabilities,” said Fran DiNuzzo, Vice President of Integrated Biology Solutions at Agilent Technologies. “Our solutions are already being used for target validation within life science companies, and we look forward to extending and enhancing these capabilities with the support of NIST. Additionally, we are pleased, once again, to be working with Icoria, whose systems biology approach is an excellent complement to our strategy and technologies.”

In conjunction with the ATP grant, Icoria has successfully completed the first technical milestone objective associated with this grant. The completed milestone was for the development, validation, and analysis of a coherent data set, the first of three to be developed under the grant. The data set is based on Icoria’s investigation of liver injury in rats induced by acetaminophen, a common pain reliever. This work also involved the discovery of biomarkers indicative of hepatoxicity (liver toxicity).

In addition, Icoria announced that Dr. Imran Shah, Head of the Company's Computational Systems Biology group, would be the principal investigator in support of this ATP grant. Dr. Shah has ten years of experience in computational biology on novel methods understanding enzymatic functions and biochemical pathways. Prior to joining Icoria, Dr. Shah was on the faculty of the School of Medicine, University of Colorado, in Denver. He was the Principal Investigator on federally sponsored research grants regarding the computational inference of gene function and biological networks. He was also the co-founder and Director of the first Doctoral Program in Bioinformatics at the University of Colorado.

Icoria is a biotechnology company applying its proprietary systems biology platform to the discovery and development of safer, more effective drugs and agrichemicals. Icoria, formerly known as Paradigm Genetics, has major collaborations with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Bayer CropScience, the Monsanto Company, Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont), the National Institute of Standards & Technology's Advanced Technology Program, and L'Oréal Inc.