MADISON, Wis., July 3, 2007 — As part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) pilot project, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced two-year grants totaling $3.4 million to support the development of innovative technologies for exploring the genomic underpinnings of cancer. Thomas Albert, Ph.D., Director of Advanced Research at NimbleGen Systems Inc., is principal investigator on a $415,000 two-year grant award. Albert's team will use high-density oligonucleotide arrays in an innovative fashion to select genomic regions for DNA sequence analysis.

Albert's work will expand upon earlier research conducted at NimbleGen involving innovative uses of microarray technology to select targeted regions of genomes so that they can be readily sequenced using next-generation shotgun-sequencing systems. Many scientists believe that such targeted "medical sequencing" will be a significant application in genomics. NimbleGen believes that the products and services resulting from this research program will play a key role in enabling development of an important new analytical capability that could change the way DNA sequence information is used in both research and healthcare.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), both part of NIH, launched the TCGA pilot in December 2005 to test the feasibility of a large-scale, systematic approach for identifying the changes that occur in the genomes of cancer cells. The goal is to generate genomic information that the research community can use to develop new and improved strategies for detecting, treating and, ultimately, preventing cancer.

"Any effort to understand cancer genomes in a comprehensive manner must address the technological hurdles of characterizing such a widely varied disease," said NCI Director John E. Niederhuber, M.D. "These grants will serve to fuel efforts to develop high-throughput, cost-efficient technologies for analysis of the cancer genome."

"Cancer poses a very complex challenge. Each of the dozens of types of cancer likely will have a different genomic profile or set of profiles. We urgently need tools equal to this task," said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., whose institute led the NIH component of the Human Genome Project. "One of the major lessons we learned from the Human Genome Project is that technology development is essential for success."

The types of tumors being studied in the pilot include brain cancer (glioblastoma), ovarian cancer and lung cancer (squamous cell), which together account for more than 200,000 cases of cancer in the United States each year.

For more details about The Cancer Genome Atlas, please go to http://cancergenome.nih.gov.

About NimbleGen Systems, Inc.
For more information about NimbleGen, please visit the company’s website at www.nimblegen.com.

NimbleGen Systems Inc. Media Contact:
Joleen Rau
Sr. Director, Marketing Communications
608-218-7623