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November 4, 2004

Natural Selection, Inc. to Assist Althea Technologies, Inc. on NCI SBIR Phase I Grant for Diagnosing Childhood Cancers

San Diego, CA – Natural Selection, Inc. and Althea Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of innovative technologies for pharmaceutical services and manufacturing, today announced that Natural Selection, Inc. will assist them in the research and development of assays for the diagnosis of childhood cancers.

Althea has received a Phase I SBIR grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health. The objective of the grant is to establish validated, quantitative gene expression assays that serve as “genetic signatures” for the diagnosis of multiple pediatric cancers, including neuroblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and Ewing family tumors, known collectively as small, round, blue cell tumors (SRBCTs). The genetic signatures, determined initially at NCI through the analysis of microarray-based expression data are being translated and validated to high throughput assays using Althea’s eXpress Profiling^TM technology.

Dr. Gary Fogel of Natural Selection, Inc., a leader in the development of evolved neural networks for gene expression analysis will collaborate in this effort, further refining the diagnostic classifier algorithms and optimizing the analysis for use with the multiplexed PCR data. The work will also be performed in collaboration with Dr. Javed Khan, an oncologist working in the Pediatric Oncology Branch of the NCI. These assays will be used to expand the data set to include information from hundreds of additional patient samples. “Althea is very excited about the potential of this approach to provide an efficient means to develop high-throughput, cost-efficient assays with research and clinical applications in classifying different forms of cancer” stated Dr. Joseph Monforte, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer and Principal Investigator on the grant. “Moreover, we believe that the approach will have broader applications, allowing researchers to develop specific gene signatures for various cancers and create assays that will allow us to diagnose different types and stages of cancer and to select the most effective therapy.”

Dr. Fogel added, “we are excited about the prospects of utilizing methods of computational intelligence for cancer diagnostics in collaboration with Althea and NCI under this Phase I research effort. We look forward to continued transition of this technology to the health care industry.”

About Natural Selection, Inc.

Natural Selection, Inc. was founded in 1993 to address complex problems in industry, medicine, and defense. The company possesses unique expertise in computational intelligence techniques, including evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. The corporation's research efforts support the discovery of new pharmaceuticals, the automated detection and discovery of important patterns and processes in bioinformatics and medical informatics, computer-assisted diagnosis, and a variety of military and industrial projects. Please visit our web site at www.natural-selection.com.

About Althea Technologies, Inc.

Althea Technologies, a leading San Diego-based pharmaceutical services firm, provides critical manufacturing and development services that support researchers worldwide in their advancement of novel therapies and efforts to apply new genomic information. Althea’s services include cGMP contract manufacturing of recombinant proteins and DNA-based therapeutics and vaccines, aseptic filling, and gene quantification using real-time PCR and gene expression analysis under GLP conditions. Additionally, Althea has introduced new services and technologies for the identification and understanding of gene signatures with innovative tools such as the company’s proprietary eXpress ProfilingTM technology. For more information, visit www.altheatech.com.