Former Director of Lead Generation at Eli Lilly Joins Cellumen

Kate Johnston, Ph.D., VP of Discovery Programs, will lead cell based discovery collaborations and advanced reagents program.

Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) July 20, 2005 -- Cellumen, Inc., the Systems Cell Biology company, announced today that Dr. Kate Johnston has joined as the Vice President of Discovery Programs. Dr. Johnston was the Director of Lead Generation Biology at Eli Lilly and Co. from 2001 to 2005, responsible for assay development and high throughput screening at Lillys Center of Excellence in Research Triangle Park, NC.

"We are fortunate to have attracted a drug discovery scientist with Kates experience to lead our collaborative discovery programs and the advanced High Content Screening (HCS) reagent program at Cellumen," stated D. Lansing Taylor, CEO of Cellumen. "In addition, we will also benefit from the experience and expertise of her husband, Dr. Paul Johnston, who will be a senior advising consultant to Cellumen in applications of HCS, while he is a visiting faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center."

Cellumen is forming collaborative discovery partnerships with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, using expertise in multiplexing HCS assays with existing and proprietary cell-based reagents and cell lines.

"I am excited about the opportunity to help drive the applications of HCS to a new level that will accelerate the early drug discovery process and I look forward to working with the pharmaceutical industry to help solve their challenges, stated Johnston. "The 'measure and manipulate' strategy of Cellumen in creating new classes of reagents for cell-based discovery will have a major impact."

About Cellumen

Cellumen is a systems cell biology company that is focused on defining the functions of genes, coding and non-coding RNAs, proteins and other cellular constituents that regulate and perform the myriad of functions that define normal life and are related to specific disease processes as potential biomarkers and/or targets for drug discovery and patient profiling. Cellumen uses multiple HCS platforms with a wide range of both commercially available and proprietary reagents to create multiplexed assays to define pathways, identify potential molecular biomarkers of disease, perform screens and to explore applications of HCS and molecular imaging for the whole process of drug discovery from target ID through clinical trial support. Cellumen can be found on the internet at www.cellumen.com.

Contact:   
D. Lansing Taylor
(412) 770-1357
ltaylor@cellumen.com

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