Biovista Awarded Research Grant on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome From the CFIDS Association of America

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, March 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Biovista announced today that it has been awarded a prestigious research grant by the CFIDS Association of America to identify non-obvious mechanisms of the disease and potential drug repositioning candidates that will advance objective diagnosis and effective treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

As part of its work, Biovista will share research outcomes with 5 top North American universities, such as Johns Hopkins, within the framework of the Association's "research institute without walls" initiative which stresses collaboration between 'tightly integrated projects led by experts in diverse disciplines' as CFIDS Association CEO Kimberly McCleary puts it.

Biovista will use its proprietary very-large-scale systematic drug repurposing platform called clinical Outcomes Search Space (COSS™) to identify drug candidates to treat CFS. "We are honored and excited to have received this prestigious grant award, which confirms our belief in the practicality of using drug repurposing to find treatments for diseases where the financials of drug development are an important parameter" said Dr. Aris Persidis, President of Biovista. "Biovista is seeking collaborations with leading Patient Advocacy Groups (PAGs) because of their extreme knowledge of the field and their access to data that can lead to effective personalized or optimized for specific sub-populations therapies. This is our second collaboration with a PAG following our work with the Thalassaemia International Federation and is well aligned with the company's goal for leading-edge work in the area of personalized medicine" he added.

"The partnership with Biovista through this grant represents an exciting opportunity to uncover potentially promising therapies for CFS using their 'agnostic' data-driven tools," Ms. McCleary stated. "The results of their search will also enhance our pursuit of biomarkers that can be used to target and monitor treatment. Their work alone will be powerful, but linking the Biovista project into our network of investigators and to the resources of our SolveCFS BioBank will greatly amplify the potential."

About Biovista:

Biovista is a privately held biotechnology company that finds novel uses for drugs and profiles their side effects using mechanism-of-action analytics. Biovista develops its own pipeline of drugs in CNS, oncology, auto-immune and rare diseases. Biovista is collaborating with biopharmaceutical companies on indication expansion and de-risking of their portfolios and with the FDA on adverse event prediction (http://www.biovista.com).

For further information please contact:

Aris Persidis
Biovista, Inc.
arisp@biovista.com
+1-434-242-6514