Ann: GENERAL: GEN: Genesis Research Notes Progres

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• Summary: GENERAL: GEN: Genesis Research Notes Progress with its Investment in RTG
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GEN
01/05/2012 15:46
GENERAL

REL: 1546 HRS Genesis Research and Development Corporation Limited

GENERAL: GEN: Genesis Research Notes Progress with its Investment in RTG

Auckland, New Zealand, 1 May 2012 - Genesis Research and Development
Corporation Ltd (NZSX/ASX: GEN) notes recent publicity regarding progress at
Real Time Genomics, Inc.
Appointment of New Chief Executive
On 25th April Real Time Genomics, Inc., a leading developer of bioinformatics
tools and applications, announced the appointment of genomics industry
veteran Steve Lombardi as the company's President and Chief Executive
Officer. Lombardi will lead the company as it commercializes its highly
scalable, patented, core technology for use in next generation genomic
analysis.
Lombardi has 30+ years of commercial biotechnology experience. He has led the
commercialization of key technologies that have defined modern molecular
biology, and has been responsible for the largest and fastest growing product
lines in the life science tools industry. From 2006 to 2010, Lombardi was
President and then CEO of Helicos BioSciences. From 2002 to 2006, he was a
senior executive at Affymetrix running corporate development and business
management. From 1986 to 2002, Lombardi held increasingly responsible
positions at Applied Biosystems in product, sales and business management,
including general management of their DNA sequencing business, during which
time annual revenues in his division grew from $10M to ~$800M.
"Bioinformatics and computational biology are the next big frontier in
genomics," said Steve Lombardi.  "Advances in tools and applications that
allow scientists to interpret and extract value from NGS data have driven a
renaissance in sequence-based genetic analysis.  My goal is to build RTG into
the market leader of next generation genomic analysis based on the company's
unique technology.  I am excited about working with a great team to make RTG
a valuable contributor to the advancement of genomic science and a leading
company in the genomics industry."
Lombardi brought in three bioinformatics experts to help with his due
diligence before accepting the role of Chief Executive at Real Time Genomics.
"The business opportunity is large but I needed to know the technology was
solid," Lombardi said.
The response from Eugene Myers (creator of BLAST and the Celera genome
assembler), Francisco de la Vega (ex-Life Technologies) and Philip Kapranov
(ex-Affymetrix, Helicos) was unanimous. "Gene [Myers] was very impressed with
the team, the technology, and where the technology could go. That was really
positive," said Lombardi.  .
Real Time Genomics Joins Illumina, Inc.'s BaseSpace Apps as Application
Development Partner
Illumina, Inc. has introduced BaseSpace Apps, a dedicated applications store
for BaseSpace, the Company's genomics cloud computing platform. Informatics
solutions available through BaseSpace Apps will allow customers to connect
with a growing community of academic, commercial and open source tool
providers who are building applications around Illumina data to dramatically
simplify and accelerate genomic data analysis. BaseSpace Apps will include a
publicly available API (application programming interface) that allows
developers to create and deploy new applications for the analysis of genetic
data generated on Illumina systems. Real Time Genomics has been named as one
of Illumina's initial application development partners.
Genesis Chief Executive, Stephen Hall, said, It is very pleasing to see the
growing interest in the Real Time Genomics technology which has grown out of
technology developed by Genesis in 2003-4. Genesis holds an equity interest
of about 7% in Real Time Genomics and looks forward to the further
development of this investment."
About Real Time Genomics, Inc.
In 2003, Genesis Research and Development contracted a team of top computer
scientists comprised of Professor John Cleary, Dr Stuart Inglis, Dr Len
Trigg, Dr Sean Irvine and Dr Richard Littin to design search algorithms in
response to Genesis's unique requirement in dealing with large plant genomes.
This team applied high performance computing and data mining techniques to
develop a fast, sensitive and error tolerant set of search solutions. Since
then, that original team, along with a larger key group of scientists,
researchers and developers, continues to further develop and enhance these
algorithms into a suite of technologies that are the foundation of Real Time
Genomics patented and patent pending products.
Real Time Genomics Inc. was incorporated in January 2009 with the goal of
developing advanced genomic analysis solutions based around this core suite
of high speed, error tolerant, proprietary and patented search technologies.
The Real Time Genomics mission is to further enable the genomics revolution
by providing the best genomics analysis software in the industry.  The first
step in fulfilling that mission is to apply its patented core technology to
solve the bottleneck that currently limits large scale genomic analysis.
Today, RTG software addresses some of the most demanding applications of
high-throughput sequence data, like providing comprehensive variant detection
and metagenomic analysis pipelines.  As an example, a complete RTG solution
for high-throughput metagenomics was developed in collaboration with The
Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis for use in the Human
Microbiome Project.
Real Time Genomics (www.realtimegenomics.com) has a passion for genomics.
The company offers software tools and applications for the extraction of
unique value from genomes.  Its competency lies in applying the combination
of its patented core technology and deep computational expertise in
algorithms to solve problems in next generation genomic analysis.  Real Time
Genomics is a private San Francisco based company backed by investment from
Catamount Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and GeneValue Ltd (a group
of New Zealand investors including Genesis Research and Development
Corporation Ltd).
About Genesis
Founded in 1994, Genesis is a New Zealand-based biotechnology company that
built a broad therapeutic development platform targeting immune disorders and
cancer and a novel single stranded gene silencing technology using the RNAi
mechanism. Genesis holds an equity interest in Real Time Genomics Inc. and
has royalty rights resulting from previous collaborations for various
products that are being developed by other parties in the fields of
agriculture, forage grass, forestry, etc. For further information see
www.genesis.co.nz
Media contacts:
Stephen Hall, Chief Executive - Genesis Research and Development Corporation
Limited, +64 21 715 725
Aki von Roy, Chairman- Genesis Research and Development Corporation Limited,

+64 21 556 659
Related Links
http://www.realtimegenomics.com/Company/News/Real-Time-Genomics-Appoints-Stev
e-Lombardi-as-CEO
http://www.bio-itworld.com/2012/04/25/lombardi-lays-out-his-vision-real-time-
genomics.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/illumina-introduces-basespace-apps-solutions
-for-genome-informatics-2012-04-25
End CA:00222405 For:GEN    Type:GENERAL    Time:2012-05-01 15:46:05