IQuum Awarded NIH Phase II Grant for Point-of-care Chlamydia and Gonorrhea Detection

Marlborough, MA, September 29, 2006 – IQuum, Inc. announced today that it has been awarded a Phase II grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) for the development of point-of-care (POC) detection of Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) based on its innovative lab-in-a-tube technology. This award follows the successful completion of Phase I work, in which IQuum demonstrated the feasibility of detecting CT in urine specimens in 1 hour on the Liat™ Analyzer. In this Phase II effort, IQuum will complete its assay development for CT and NG detection, develop large volume sample preparation methods, and prepare a clinical study plan for FDA market clearance.

“IQuum’s Liat Analyzer sets the standard for simplicity in molecular diagnostics,” said Dr. Shuqi Chen, CEO of IQuum. “By allowing any hospital, clinic, or physician’s office to perform sensitive nucleic acid testing in a fast and reliable manner, the system is ideally suited for the detection of sexually transmitted diseases, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea.”

Worldwide, Chlamydia and Gonorrhea are the most common sexually transmitted diseases. While only 900,000 new cases of CT infection were reported in the US in 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that there were 2.8 million actual cases, suggesting that almost 2 million cases went undetected. Left untreated, CT and NG can result in serious health complications, including pelvic inflammatory disease, sterility, and ectopic pregnancy, as well as the continued spread of disease.

Current POC tests for CT and NG lack sensitivity, and thus routinely fail to identify infection in a significant number of patients. Sensitive molecular tests however, are limited by their long turnaround times and technical complexity, which require testing to be performed in centralized laboratories, resulting in significant patient loss to follow-up and delayed treatment of diseases. The Liat POC CT/NG Assay can overcome these limitations, and allow clinicians to identify more patients with infection and provide immediate treatment, thus reducing the associated healthcare burden.

About the Liat™ Analyzer

The Liat Analyzer is a fully automated, portable and standalone molecular diagnostics system that promises to deliver the advancement in biotechnology to daily life. The system refines nucleic acid testing to three simple steps: collecting a raw biological sample such as whole blood into a Liat Tube, scanning the tube's barcode, and inserting the tube into the Liat Analyzer. The analyzer automatically executes all the required assay steps, including reagent preparation, target enrichment, inhibitor removal, nucleic acid extraction, amplification and real-time detection, and reports test results on the built-in touch screen within 1 hour. No further operator intervention or data interpretation is required. The system’s simplicity, along with its closed tube design and robust error prevention features, makes it ideally suited for near patient molecular diagnostics and field operated applied tests.

IQuum is the leader in developing lab-in-a-tube technology, a novel biological sample testing platform which provides revolutionary benefits to a broad cross section of the bioassay market. The Company's proprietary technology enables the non-specialized personnel to perform more sophisticated biological sample testing in any setting with greater speed. Founded in 1998, the Company is commercializing its lab-in-a-tube technology and products for the clinical diagnostics, bio-defense, and industrial testing markets. For more information, please visit www.IQuum.com.

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