PuraMatrix™ Hydrogels Win International Awards

For Biomaterial Nanotechnology & Regenerative Medicine

Most innovative new product to impact biotechnology, drug discovery, medical devices

Boston, Mass. — March 1, 2004 3DM, Inc. announced that 3DM co-founders Drs. Shuguang Zhang and Carlos Semino, have each received awards for outstanding contributions to the fields of materials science and cell biology by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and the 2003 World Congress on Regenerative Medicine, respectively.

“PuraMatrix™ is beginning to prove its value across a number of applications in orthopedic medical devices, tissue engineering and stem cell regenerative medicine,” stated Dr. Alan Grodzinsky, Director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), “These awards recognize the pioneering work of Drs. Zhang, Semino and others who are furthering work on these elegantly simple biomaterials.”

Dr. Robert Langer, one of the world’s foremost experts on biomaterials and tissue engineering and Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at MIT, emphasized “Through the work of Shuguang Zhang and his colleagues, PuraMatrix™ is finding more and more novel uses in biology and bioengineering."

Dr. Shuguang Zhang has been selected as a 2003-2004 Fellow from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, in honor of his contributions to biomaterials and regenerative medicine. In tandem with accepting the fellowship, Dr. Zhang will present his work on PuraMatrix at the 3rd General Congress on Regenerative Medicine in Tokyo, March 25, 2004.

Dr. Carlos Semino was honored with the Paul H. Fraisse Prize for Outstanding Scientific Contribution at the 2003 World Congress on Regenerative Medicine (www.regmed.org) held in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Semino’s presentation was entitled “Bioengineering Cell-Instructive Synthetic Extracellular Matrices for Tissue Engineering” and detailed his work with hepatocyte progenitor cultures in PuraMatrix™.

About PuraMatrix™

PuraMatrix™ Hydrogels may be used to create synthetic nanofiber scaffolds to encapsulate cells in 3-D, plate cells in 2-D coatings, or as microcarriers in suspension cultures. PuraMatrix™ has utility in medical devices and research encompassing drug discovery, tissue engineering, cell migration and invasion, neurite outgrowth, and hepatocyte functionality and toxicity. PuraMatrix™, as recently detailed in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, EMBO, and Tissue Engineering. Medical products companies have begun replacing bovine collagen and other animal-derived biomaterials with synthetic PuraMatrix™ in their production processes and end products. PuraMatrix™ is forward compatible with in vivo implant studies, clinical therapeutics and bioproduction cGMP requirements, and is already in use at major pharmaceutical companies, the National Institutes of Health, and leading clinical research institutions such as MDAnderson, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

About 3DM Inc.

3DM is a privately-held specialty biomaterials and medical device company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The patented technology, exclusively licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was pioneered through the work and expertise of Drs. Alan Grodzinsky, Robert Langer, Alexander Rich, Carlos Semino, and Shuguang Zhang.

Source:                  3DM Inc.

Contact:                 Zen Chu, President
                                contact@puramatrix.com

Website:                www.PuraMatrix.com