Niskayuna, NY and Indianapolis, IN - October 1, 2007 - GE Global Research, the General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) centralized research and development organization, and GE Healthcare have announced a three-year collaborative research agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) to discover and develop advanced in vitro diagnostic assays that may predict cancer treatment response to targeted therapies.

In addition to Lilly's existing chemotherapy agents, Lilly is developing targeted cancer therapeutics, which are now in both early and late stage clinical development. GE is developing advanced multiplexed tissue-based assays and image analysis tools that can measure multiple biological pathways. The goal of this collaboration is to discover key protein and gene signatures that will predict the likelihood that a medication will be effective in treating certain cancers. Once identified the signatures can then be used to pre-select patients who are good candidates for the targeted therapy.

"The co-development of diagnostics and therapeutics is a major strategy of GE Healthcare's "Early Health" vision, and our collaboration with Lilly and our expansion into in vitro diagnostics is right in line with this strategy," said, Dr. Michael Montalto, head of Molecular Imaging and Diagnostics Advanced Technologies for Global Research. "The combination of diagnostics and therapeutics is opening new doors in the fight against cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Through the application of molecular and cell biology to understanding disease, we can provide pharmaceutical companies with more advanced tools to develop more optimal drug therapies for cancer patients."

"Our collaboration with GE complements Lilly's research and development strategy of tailored therapeutics, or in other words, finding the right dose of the right medication at the right time for patients. Through our collaboration with GE Healthcare and GE Global Research, we hope to identify biomarkers for two of our targeted cancer therapeutic agents by examining patient tissues in order to determine which patients are most likely to respond to the medications and just as importantly which are not," said Dr. Richard Gaynor, M.D., vice president, cancer research and global oncology platform for Eli Lilly and Company.

As the world becomes more educated and advanced in molecular medicine, the healthcare industry is experiencing a growing convergence of therapeutics and diagnostics. Through the use of molecular diagnostic tools that can discover key protein or gene signatures, pharmaceutical companies can begin to use that information to determine which patients are most likely to respond to a particular medication based on their particular genetic makeup.

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