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  Metabometrix and Waters Sign Agreement.  

Firms to Pursue and Advance Solutions for Metabonomics Studies

Milford, MA, March 10, 2003–Waters® and Metabometrix® (London, England) have announced the signing of a three-year collaboration agreement aimed at providing drug discovery scientists with new solutions for metabonomics studies. As part of this agreement Waters Corporation and Metabometrix will share intellectual property and look for ways to combine proprietary technologies to serve the needs of pharmaceutical scientists.

Metabonomics characterizes key time-related biochemical changes in animals and humans caused by a variety of physiological interventions and disease stressors. Applications include the characterization and prediction of drug toxicity diagnosis and monitoring of clinical disease, evaluation of therapeutic intervention and for understanding the effects of genetic modifications.

Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Chief Scientific Officer of Metabometrix said, “Of course we are extremely pleased with this development, this will allow us to build on our metabolic experience generated in the NMR spectroscopic arena. We confidently expect that the novel integration of advanced NMR and MS technologies will allow problems previously undecipherable complexity to be resolved in important disease areas”

Waters will provide Metabometrix with LC/MS instrumentation including Alliance® HT LC, and Q-Tof micro™ mass spectrometer systems along with, novel chemistries and methods developed specifically for metabonomics studies. This will allow Metabometrix to generate LC/MS data in tandem with their current Flow-injection and magic angle spinning NMR capabilities. In return Metabometrix will help to further develop Waters metabonomics technology and give Waters company access to Metabometrix’ data handling, informatics and chemometric modeling expertise.

Metabometrix’s proprietary platform of metabonomics technologies generates, classifies and interprets metabolic information from biological fluids, cells and tissues. The technology has the potential to redefine drug discovery and development from lead molecule selection to marketing of clinically successful drugs.

In addition to its own intrinsic power, metabonomics promises to furnish a real world and commercially applicable dimension to the pivotal sciences of genomics, proteomics and molecular diagnostics.

Until now nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been the main technology applied in this field, an area pioneered by Metabometrix and their world leading academic group at Imperial College, London University (from which Metabometrix was spun-out). Although NMR provides many advantages in metabonomic studies from the perspective of pattern quantitation, non-destructive analysis and for understanding metabolite interactions, LC/MS will provide complementary information to allow the detection of lower concentration biomarkers and biomarkers that are sometimes ‘masked’ in the NMR data. Due to the complexity of the samples, the greater the level of information contained in the data the better the samples can be classified. To this end the collaboration will involve the use of quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The sensitivity, elevated resolution and mass accuracy are crucial for unlocking the required information in metabonomics studies using LC/MS.

Beverly Kenny, Metabonomics Program Manager, of Waters Corporation commented, “We are delighted to announce this collaboration between ourselves and the accomplished scientists at Metabometrix. We welcome the opportunity to advance LC/MS technology that will boost pharmaceutical R&D productivity and facilitate making early diagnosis and specialized medicine realities.”

About Waters Corporation (http://www.waters.com/)
Waters (NYSE:WAT) is a leading supplier of liquid chromatographs and mass spectrometers with applications in the life science and analytical chemistry markets. Micromass® MS technologies are already recognized as an industry standard in the drug discovery & development and proteomics fields. The company reported revenues of $890 million in 2002 and employs nearly 3,500.

About Metabometrix (https://metabometrix.com/)
Metabometrix is a spin-off company built on the skills of the world leading metabonomics research team at Imperial College, London, and experienced scientists from the UK and US pharmaceutical industries.

Metabonomics has been developed over 20 years by a world-leading team directed by Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the Chief Scientist of Metabometrix. The group’s portfolio of intellectual and technical advances is unique, and underpins a substantial lead in the field.

Waters, Micromass, Alliance and Q-Tof are trademarks of Waters Corporation.
Metabometrix is a trademark of Metabometrix Corporation.