NovaScreen Announces GEN SEP II Screening Service

NovaScreen Biosciences Corporation, a Caliper Life Sciences company has announced its General Side Effect II panel (GEN SEP II), a specialized side effect screening service.

The panel from NovaScreen's original general side effect profile panel incorporates a broader range of receptor subtype assays.

Many of these assays use human source material, which helps researchers and scientists gain a clinically relevant understanding of drug side effect liabilities.

GEN SEP II addresses side effects across a broad range of therapeutic areas including immunology, cancer, inflammation, pain, gastrointestinal, metabolic, neurological and cardiovascular.

"The GEN SEP II panel continues the NovaScreen tradition of high-quality side effect profiling," said Peter Carlson, Ph.D., vice president of NovaScreen.

"In today's discovery environment, gearing drug development efforts towards more clinically relevant experimentation is critical. Employing human receptor assays that cover a broad therapeutic range is one way to accomplish this."

"The panel was designed to include assays that specifically address emerging drug approval requirements," added Carlson.

"As an example, NovaScreen includes the hERG channel assay, an indicator of cardiovascular toxicity, in the GEN SEP II panel."

"Cardiovascular side effects are currently a huge concern in the drug development business, and identifying these issues as early as possible helps pharmaceutical companies avoid costly late-stage drug failures."

NovaScreen also offers a Side Effect Database (SED) that can be used in conjunction with GEN SEP II.

The SED is designed to enable customers to compare GEN SEP II results with a database of 2,300 compounds including marketed, failed, withdrawn, and over-the-counter drugs that have been screened through 65 ligand-binding and enzyme assays.