[February 14, 2012]

Avesthagen Signs MOU with CosmosID™ for Improving Diagnosis and Management of Tuberculosis

Avesthagen Limited - India's leading systems biology biotechnology company, has signed a MOU with CosmosID™, a U.S. based company for collaborating to correctly diagnose and therapeutically manage Tuberculosis treatment.

Tuberculosis or TB is a tropical disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a bacterium. Bacteria, in general and M. tuberculosis, in particular, can mutate into various forms called strains. Strains may be infectious or non-infectious and may vary in their disease causing abilities or virulence. Traditionally, TB patients are treated with antibiotics without an analysis of the strain involved. This generic approach may cause problems as the strain involved may not be virulent or may have developed resistance to a particular antibiotic.

Avesthagen and CosmosID will pool their expertise to identify the particular TB strain and thereby support proper treatment. The collaboration is expected to result in a new method for developing diagnostic kits for rapid screening of patient samples.

According to Dr. Villoo Morawala-Patell, Founder & CMD of Avesthagen Limited, "Tuberculosis is a serious infectious disease and the efficacy of its treatment lies in accurate and rapid identification of the TB strains. Avesthagen has been working on TB for some time and has developed a genmic data pool. In CosmosID we have found a leader and strong partner, developing rapid pathogen identification methods, MetaSeq™ Genomics, to facilitate more precise diagnostic screening of infectious disease in a single, rapid, and accurate test. The collaboration will help in improving the healthcare in developing and lesser developed countries where it is needed the most."

Dr. Rita Colwell, Founder and Chairman of CosmosID said, "We are proud to be associated with Avesthagen on this important project. Our collaboration will provide significant benefits for TB patients worldwide and demonstrates a new paradigm for medical diagnostic screening of infectious disease."

About Avesthagen Limited:

Avesthagen is India's leading integrated systems biology platform company that focuses on achieving convergence of food, pharma and population genetics leading to predictive preventive and personalized healthcare. Avesthagen partners include multiple top 10 global companies in each of its fields of research. Since its inception Avesthagen has grown into one of India's leading healthcare biotech companies. Avesthagen has developed clinically validated botanical bioactives and has a strong pipeline of bio-similars.

www.avesthagen.com Contact anilram@avesthagen.com

About CosmosID™, Inc.:

CosmosID™, Inc. is a privately owned company based in College Park, MD that provides pathogen diagnostic software solutions for rapid identification of pathogens, antibiotic resistant determinants, and virulence factors. The Company works with customers in the fields of microbial detection, product safety, biosecurity, bioforensics, and medical diagnostics. Based on NextGen (News - Alert) sequencing, software, and reference databases, it develops applications to identify environmental microbial hazards, biothreat agents that endanger public health, and pathogens that cause infectious disease.

For further information, contact Bob Evans, bob.evans@cosmosid.net or www.cosmosid.com.

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