3DM Inc. Founders Awarded $6.5MM NIH Program Grant for Tissue Engineering Research

Nanotechnology Biomaterials for Drug Delivery, Cartilage Therapies, Liver Engineering and Cardiac Regeneration

Cambridge , Mass. – November 2, 2005 – 3DM Inc. is pleased to announce that three of its scientific founders have been awarded a multi-year National Institutes of Health Program Grant funding research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School. The $6.5 million dollar NIH grant will span five years of research efforts, focused on continuing to develop 3DM's patented self-assembling peptide technologies in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

“This large grant amid very competitive funding environments at NIH validates the strength of 3DM's technologies and their promise across a range of clinical therapies,” stated Zen Chu, President of 3DM. “These scientists are thought leaders in their respective fields and we look forward to many years of rigorous experimentation and publication using 3DM's commercial materials and future derivatives."

Stated goals of their interdisciplinary research will emphasize tissue engineering and clinical interventions in cartilage & bone defects, cardiac regeneration, liver tissue engineering, stem cell bioproduction, and scaffold biomaterials tailored for specific cell responses.

The Primary Investigators on the grant:

Alan Grodzinsky, Sc.D. - MIT Professor of Mechanical, Electrical & Biological Engineering, Director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, NIH MERIT Award winner.

Shuguang Zhang, Ph.D. - Director, MIT's Laboratory for Molecular Self-Assembly

Linda Griffith Ph.D., MIT Professor of Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
Director, MIT Biotechnology Process Engineering Center

Carlos Semino, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, MIT Center for Biomedical Engineering

Roger Kamm, Ph.D., MIT Germeshausen Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering

Richard T. Lee, M.D., Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women's Hospital

About PuraMatrix
PuraMatrix Synthetic Peptide Hydrogels are the best-selling synthetic scaffolds for cell culture and bioproduction research, and have won numerous scientific awards. PuraMatrix gels consist of smart polymers, self-assembling in cell culture or in vivo to create biocompatible nanofiber scaffolds to facilitate healthy cell growth and tissue regeneration. PuraMatrix is currently in pre-clinical testing for orthopedics, cardiac and other medical device and drug delivery applications. PuraMatrix is used by most of the leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic laboratories and has been featured in over thirty premier scientific journal publications. R&D Magazine recently awarded PuraMatrix its 42nd annual R&D 100 Prize as one of the most significant new products to impact life science and medical research.

About 3DM Inc.
3DM is a privately-held specialty biomaterials and medical device company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 3DM has partnered with BD Biosciences for marketing PuraMatrix worldwide to the life science research and drug discovery communities. 3DM is further developing their self-assembling peptide hydrogels as medical devices in orthopedics, cardiovascular therapies and drug delivery applications. The patented technology, exclusively licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was pioneered at MIT through the work and expertise of Drs. Shuguang Zhang, Alan Grodzinsky, Robert Langer, Alexander Rich, Carlos Semino and Lisa Spirio.

Source: 3DM Inc.
               puramatrix.com

Contact: Zen Chu , President
                877-430-9595 contact@puramatrix.com