SURESNES, France and MONTRÉAL, QC, Nov. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ - Les Laboratoires Servier, France (Servier) and Prognomix Inc., Canada (Prognomix) announced today that they have entered into a research and development agreement aimed at identifying novel targets as part of programs meant to develop innovative type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease treatment.

This collaboration will rest on the discovery platform developed by Prognomix. This platform comprises genomic and bioinformatic technologies, a database of phenotypic and genotypic data and an assembly of results of the analysis of these data that are at the foundation of a knowledge base that will be exploited by the partners. This knowledge base was developed using, among other, the data collected during ADVANCE, the largest clinical study ever conducted on Type 2 diabetes and of which Servier was the main sponsor.

As part of the agreement, Servier will make a contract signature fee payment and will be granted options to obtain rights to use the results of the collaboration.

According to Dr. Pavel Hamet, President of Prognomix, « Closing of this agreement represents an important step in the development of Prognomix and confirms the value of the knowledge base that we have developed. We are happy to initiate this collaboration with Servier, a well known and very innovative pharmaceutical company and we are excited by the opportunities it represents ».

According to Dr. Emmanuel Canet, President of Research and Development at Servier, « This partnership confirms Servier interest for well validated biomarkers, allowing for the identification of the patients who will benefit the most from Servier therapeutic innovations ».

About Prognomix Inc.

Prognomix Inc. is a privately held Personalized Medicine company incorporated in Montreal in 2005 and focused on discovery and clinical application of genomic signatures predictive of susceptibility to diseases, their complications and individual therapeutic responsiveness. The company has made significant progress in the identification of the genomic features associated with complications of type II diabetes (T2D). Based on these findings Prognomix has developed a prototype of a molecular diagnostic kit that will include clinical, genomic and epigenomic markers

About Les laboratoires Servier

Servier is a leading French independent pharmaceutical company and the second French pharmaceutical company worldwide. Its affiliates are present in 140 countries and account for 20,000 employees including 3,000 in research and development. www.servier.com

SOURCE Prognomix Inc.