BioSeek's BioMAP® Systems Platform Used to Predict Toxicity of Environmental and Other
Compounds on Human Health
Detroit, MI (January 31, 2012): Asterand plc (LSE: ATD) today
announced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
has expanded its collaboration and Phase II funding
commitment with Asterand's subsidiary BioSeek LLC. Under the
EPA ToxCast™ screening program, BioSeek is employing its
unique BioMAP® Systems human primary cell assay
platform to predict the biological activity and potential
toxicity of environmental and other chemicals on human
health. The new agreement provides $696,000 in additional
funding for BioSeek and adds a further 100 compounds to the
more than 1000 environmental compounds, pesticides, failed
pharmaceuticals, and nanomaterials already analyzed using
BioMAP Systems in this ongoing effort.
"Through our work with EPA, BioMAP is yielding a rich harvest
of biological information on a wide variety of environmental
and other chemicals and their potential effects on human
health," said Ellen Berg, Ph.D., General Manager of BioSeek.
"The long-term goal of the ToxCastTM program is
to establish in vitro assays that can forecast the toxicity
of chemical compounds and other materials in humans and
animals, and several of our primary human cell assays are
contributing to predictive models in this effort."
"As later phases of the ToxCast program include a variety of
pharmaceutical compounds," Dr. Berg continued, "our
proprietary BioMAP compound database is gaining a rich
dataset for mining with our pharmaceutical partners, to help
understand the activities and potential safety of their own
compounds in the context of human biology. Such insights can
then be applied to better prioritize compounds in development
prior to undertaking costly human clinical trials."
"We commend EPA's efforts to develop superior techniques for
predicting the potential health risks of environmental
chemicals through its ToxCast program," said Jack Davis,
Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer of Asterand plc.
"We look forward to continuing our support of the EPA in this
endeavour."
BioSeek's proprietary BioMAP technology platform bridges the
gap between in vitro and in vivo testing and connects primary
human cell-based assay data to clinically relevant results.
Compounds tested in BioMAP Assay Systems generate biological
activity profiles that are compared to those of thousands of
well-characterized agents in our proprietary BioMAP database,
using a variety of predictive computational analyses. BioMAP
Assay Systems are
physiologically relevant and concurrently provide
multifactorial readouts relevant to compound efficacy and
safety. Thus, a compound's detected activities effectively
preview in vivo results and forecast potential clinical
outcomes. The BioMAP technology platform is consistently
reproducible within and between assays, is high throughput,
and supports drug discovery programs from library screening
to lead optimization and candidate selection. For more
information on BioMAP, please visit our website at http://www.bioseekinc.com/.
Asterand plc is a leading supplier of high quality human
tissue and tissue-based services. Our comprehensive approach
to human tissue and research services offers pharmaceutical,
biotech and diagnostic companies the unique opportunity to
have one company meet all of their human biomaterial needs
along the continuum of drug discovery and development.
BioSeek LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Asterand plc, is
improving the success rate of pharmaceutical research and
development by integrating human biology from the earliest
stages of drug discovery onward through its unique BioMAP®
predictive human-based models. Our mission is to accelerate
target discovery and drug compound validation and enable our
clients to take safer and more effective drugs into the
market.
For more information about Asterand and BioSeek, please visit
http://www.asterand.com
The U.S. EPA ToxCastTM Program is developing
approaches to predict chemical toxicity using data from
high-throughput and high content in vitro assays. The goal of
ToxCastTM is to develop and verify
"toxicity signatures," which are algorithms using
in vitro and in silico data to predict in vivo toxicities.
Phase I of ToxCastTM has produced data from
>300 chemicals, ~500 in vitro assays and ~100 in vivo
endpoints, providing a powerful dataset for evaluating the
applicability of various analytic approaches for predicting
the potential for an
adverse response. The initial results from Phase I of the
ToxCastTM program were presented on May 14-15,
2009 at the First ToxCastTM Data Analysis Summit
held in Research Triangle
Park, NC. Phase II of the ToxCastTM program will
expand on and verify the ability of this approach to predict
potential human toxicity. In Phase III,
ToxCastTM will expand the list to
thousands of environmental chemicals, delivering an
affordable, science-based system for decision-makers to
prioritize chemicals for more detailed toxicological
evaluations.
- END -
Ivan Plavec, VP Business Development Tel: +1 (650) 416 7629
Asterand plc
Jack Davis, Chairman and
Interim Chief Executive Officer Tel: + 44 (0) 1763 211 600
/
+ 1 (313) 263-0960
Antony Legge Tel: +44 (0) 20 7776 6550
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