08-Sep-2006

Cybergenetics Awarded Contract to Identify World Trade Center Victim Remains Using TrueAllele® Technology

Advanced TrueAllele® SuperComputer to Help Identify WTC Victims

PITTSBURGH, PA, September 8, 2006 - Cybergenetics has been awarded a contract by New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) to apply its unique TrueAllele® technology for identifying World Trade Center (WTC) remains. Cybergenetics is the leading innovator of automated forensic DNA interpretation technology.

Dr. Mechthild Prinz, Director of the OCME Forensic Biology Department, "anticipates that the use of the TrueAllele technology on the WTC effort will yield additional results." The OCME has identified the remains of 1,598 victims through DNA testing and other forensic methods. However, 1,151 missing people -- 42 percent of all WTC victims -- have not yet been identified. And 9,797 of the 20,730 victim remains specimens recovered from the WTC site have not yet been identified.

"We are looking forward to working with the OCME to help identify more WTC victim remains," says Dr. Mark Perlin, CEO of Cybergenetics. "Using advanced TrueAllele computation will help match more DNA from victim remains to missing people, and bring closure to their families."

Victims leave biological remains at a mass disaster site. Though damaged, these victim remains can produce DNA profile information. Separately, DNA collected from personal effects and family members of the missing people can produce reference DNA profiles. Victim remains can be identified by comparing their DNA profiles with the reference DNA profiles of missing people, and finding matches between them.

However, current analysis software for data from damaged DNA may yield only limited identification information. Cybergenetics automated TrueAllele data review technology overcomes this limitation by using advanced mathematics that enables computers to rapidly extract far more information from the same DNA data. By reanalyzing the existing WTC DNA data from both victim remains and missing people using the TrueAllele technology, Cybergenetics will help the OCME identify more victim remains.

"Studies show that compared with manual analysis, our automated TrueAllele system can extract a thousand times more information from difficult DNA data," say Dr. Perlin. "A highly parallel TrueAllele system can work 24/7, producing many DNA profiles every minute. The computer's advantage here is time and information."

In its Pittsburgh office, Cybergenetics is using a TrueAllele SuperComputer containing dozens of cooperating computers working in parallel to accelerate this important WTC project. Each TrueAllele processor independently solves a DNA problem, and shares its results through a database computer. Initially developed over ten years ago with pattern recognition methods, the TrueAllele technology now uses sophisticated statistical search to interpret and match DNA profiles.

Conventional DNA data review is a labor-intensive task that requires human examination of every data element and involves significant time and expense. Cybergenetics automated intelligent TrueAllele system performs this computational task rapidly, accurately and cost effectively, enabling forensic scientists to focus on the DNA science, instead of high-dimensional mathematics. The TrueAllele technology is protected by US patents 5,541,067, 5,580,728, 5,876,933, 6,054,268, 6,750,011 and 6,807,490; international patents are pending.