ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 27, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- MIR Preclinical Services (MIR) has been awarded $1.2 million through the State of Michigan's 21st Century Jobs Fund initiative to improve its newly renovated facility and expand preclinical imaging services. Selection was based on an independent peer-review process conducted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Michigan Strategic Economic Investment and Commercialization (SEIC) Board. The 21st Century Jobs Fund is administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to support commercialization efforts in targeted high-tech, high-growth sectors of the state.
"Only 12 percent of companies that applied for 21st Century Jobs funding received awards from the state," stated Frank Urban, Manager of Business Development at MIR. "It is gratifying that the AAAS and the state of Michigan have recognized MIR's potential and its continued commitment to scientific excellence. This funding from the state will allow us to rapidly expand into new therapeutic areas and add to our suite of proprietary imaging technologies for evaluating drug efficacy that are not available anywhere else," Mr. Urban continued.
"MIR is a rapidly growing young company," stated Dr. William Elliott, Vice President of Pharmacology and Quality assurance at MIR. "We are the only preclinical contract research organization (CRO) to own and operate the suite of state of the art imaging modalities we employ. In addition to providing service, we are also developing new image-based technologies that are helping to find tomorrow's cures. A portion of this award will be used to commercialize our unique imaging assays."
One such assay involves the noninvasive bioluminescence-based dynamic imaging of treatment-induced apoptosis in tumors. This reporter is being validated in multiple tumor cell lines commonly used in cancer drug discovery research. "We feel this technology, along with other reporters currently in development, will be powerful tools for drug discovery scientists," concluded Dr. Elliott.
About MIR Preclinical Services
MIR is a contract research organization specializing in the application of state of the art, multimodality imaging technologies to the preclinical evaluation of novel drug candidates. The company boasts management with over 60 years of major pharma cancer drug discovery experience, and is a leader in the integration of traditional anti-cancer efficacy testing with clinically relevant imaging technologies to provide new insights to drug discovery and development. MIR offers a wide array of tumor models including human tumor xenograft, syngeneic, and transgenic models. The company is unique in its ability to apply non-invasive in vivo imaging modalities including preclinical MRI, X-ray micro-CT, high resolution preclinical PET, and bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging to visualize biological processes such as signal transduction, apoptosis and angiogenesis, and tumor growth. MIR actively collaborates with leading scientists in academia in developing new drug evaluation technologies with a view to publication of results in peer reviewed journals.