AUSTIN, Texas, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Rules-Based Medicine, Inc. a leading provider of multiplexed protein biomarker services, will be a collaborator on the Institut Pasteur research project Milieu Interieur (the environment within), funded through a LabEx grant from the French government. The project will rely on RBM's TruCulture(R), an innovative in vitro model that preserves physiological cellular interactions, to more accurately describe the complexities of the human immune system.

The Milieu Interieur project will take an unprecedented look at the human immune system, an intricate signaling network that protects against disease. Because the human immune system has such varied reactions to external stimuli it is difficult to predict individual responses to infection and medical therapies such as vaccines. A federation of renowned researchers and clinicians from Institut Pasteur, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), will integrate cutting-edge technology from a number of scientific disciplines including immunology, genomics, molecular biology and bioinformatics to establish the parameters that characterize the immune system of healthy individuals. Insightful analysis of this research will forge a direct path toward personalized medicine - tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time.

"Susceptibility to infections, severity of disease, and response to medical therapies and vaccines are highly variable from one individual to another," said Matthew Albert, Director of the Department of Immunology, Institut Pasteur. "TruCulture is an ideal research tool that simplifies the sample collection and culturing process and will help to reveal the linkages between the genotypes and phenotypes that are responsible for immune system variability."

RBM's TruCulture system will be utilized for blood collection and culture and it is expected that at least 40,000 TruCulture tubes will be required to characterize the immune responses of the 1,000 participants. TruCulture is designed to capture immune cell activity while avoiding many of the variables often associated with sample collection and manipulation. An important advantage of this collection system is that cell stimulations are performed instantly, at the point of collection, which provides a more accurate snapshot of the subject's immune response. The use of TruCulture will allow researchers to describe individual differences at the genomic, proteomic, and inflammation pathway levels. The involvement of Rules-Based Medicine, Inc. as a partner will ensure timely development of new assays and application to relevant diseases.

On April 27, 2011, Myriad Genetics (Nasdaq: MYGN) of Salt Lake City, a leader in molecular diagnostics, announced an agreement to acquire Rules-Based Medicine. The transaction is expected to be complete by May 31, 2011. RBM headquarters will remain in Austin, TX and will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Myriad Genetics under the name Myriad RBM.

About Rules-Based Medicine, Inc.

Rules-Based Medicine's biomarker testing service provides clinical researchers, physicians and healthcare providers with reproducible, quantitative, multiplexed data for hundreds of proteins to advance drug development and patient care. The Company's proprietary Multi Analyte Profiling (MAP) technology offers pre-clinical and clinical researchers broad, cost-effective protein analyses in multiple species from a small sample volume. MAP technology also supports RBM's drive to develop diagnostics that aid in the detection of complex diseases and conditions in areas of unmet medical need such as neuropsychiatry, nephrology, immunology and cardiology. RBM's initial molecular diagnostic test, VeriPsych(TM), is a blood-based test that aids in the confirmation of diagnosis of recent-onset schizophrenia by evaluating a proprietary set of 51 biomarkers. RBM also offers innovative and proprietary ex vivo testing systems such as TruCulture(R), the first fully-closed, reproducible whole blood culture system.

More information about RBM is located at http://www.rulesbasedmedicine.com.

About Institut Pasteur

Created in 1887 by Louis Pasteur, the Institut Pasteur is a private, public-interest foundation and an internationally recognized center for biomedical research. Its mission is to contribute to disease prevention and eradication in France and around the world through scientific and medical research, education and public health programs. Close to 2,600 people work at its Paris campus.

Along with research on living science, a large part of its work is devoted to the study of infectious disease, genetic disease, neuro-degenerative disease and some cancers. The Institut Pasteur is the hub of an international network of 32 institutes on every continent. Ten of its researchers have received the Nobel Prize in Medicine since its establishment.

More information about Institut Pasteur is located at http://www.pasteur.fr

About the LabEx Laboratories of Excellence grants

The LabEx grant program is part of the French government's Invest in the Future economic stimulus plan. The program aims to provide world-class labs with the resources they need to compete at an international level, attract top-tier faculty and researchers from around the world, and implement high-level integrated policies encompassing research, education, and technology transfer. A total of euro 1 billion will be distributed under LabEx grants, including euro 100 million of direct funding and euro 900 million of interest-generating capital.

More information on http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr

SOURCE Rules-Based Medicine, Inc.