New Drug Screen Predicts Toxicity

A new screen can evaluate a very small quantity of a new drug compound and predict its toxicity.

The evaluation with the Predictive Toxigenomics Screen can be made using compounds that are available immediately after high-throughput screening and well in advance of the expensive drug scale-up required for mammalian safety experiments, say the developers. They believe the technology will generate information that could save pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars.

The technology was developed by scientists at CuraGen (New Haven, CT, USA) in collaboration with toxicologists at Bayer AG (Leverkusen, Germany). They developed the assay by analyzing more than 100 known toxic compounds and identifying marker genes whose activity correlated with specific modes of liver toxicity. Drug compounds under review are applied in extremely small quantities to primary hepatocyte cells in vitro. The cellular activity of these dosed compounds is then evaluated against the proprietary toxicity markers. Evidence of liver toxicity is one of the primary reasons that drug compounds fail during preclinical development.

"We are now looking forward to applying this technology to CuraGen's and Bayer's drug development programs, and offering it as a service to our collaborative partners,” said Michael P. McKenna, PH.D., vice president of collaborative research at CuraGen. "We believe the adoption of this screen will offer a significant competitive advantage in pharmaceutical development.”





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