March 25, 2008 — Affymetrix Inc. has signed an agreement with Avesthagen Ltd., a biotechnology company based in Bangalore, India. Under the terms of the agreement, Affymetrix’ microarray technology will be used for the AVESTAGENOME Project, a comprehensive genetic study of more than 60,000 Parsi individuals. The project will explore the genetic basis of longevity and create a genetic, genealogic, and medical database of the Parsi-Zoroastrian population.

Thirty-one percent of the Parsi population lives beyond the age of 60, compared to 7% nationally. A better understanding of the genetic causes of longevity could have a major impact on the Indian Government’s healthcare budget and drug companies’ marketing efforts. The Parsi community was selected because of its longevity and its relatively genetically homogeneous population. The AVESTAGENOME Project was designed to lead to discovery of novel biomarkers and drug targets that can result in predictive, preventive, and personalized healthcare.

The use of Affymetrix technology will enable researchers to correlate genes with longevity, as well as neurodegenerative conditions, breast cancer, diabetes, and other complex diseases that affect the Parsi community.

The AVESTAGENOME Project takes a systems biology approach that encompasses not only genotyping, but also expression profiling and transcriptomics. The genotyping phase of the project, which began on October 5, 2007, consists of 10,000 samples in the first year. By the middle of 2008, the team will perform expression profiling and transcript mapping experiments across a subset of the samples. The project is expected to be completed before 2013.