Affymetrix and Iconix to Develop Solutions for Assessing Drug Toxicity
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Affymetrix Inc. and Iconix Pharmaceuticals Inc. have announced that the companies have signed a collaborative agreement to develop solutions to aid in the study of the toxicological and pharmacological properties of drugs and drug candidates.
The collaboration will aim to significantly accelerate the drug development process by combining Affymetrix' GeneChip® microarray technology with Iconix' DrugMatrix® 640 compound reference database and analysis software.
Together, Affymetrix' GeneChip expression arrays and Iconix' analysis methods will provide detailed information on a drug candidate's toxicological liabilities and pharmacological properties.
Using such tools, researchers will be able to compare gene expression profiles to the Iconix' Drug Signatures® library to help predict the impact that gene expression changes may have on biological pathways critical to the body's toxic response to drugs.
"We are pleased to work with Affymetrix on this program which we believe will remove what has been a major hurdle to the widespread application of toxicogenomics to drug discovery," said Don Halbert, Ph.D., executive vice president of Research and Development at Iconix Pharmaceuticals.
"The new paradigm will streamline all the steps required to help companies put gene expression data into the context of toxicology."
"Arming pharmaceutical companies with the fullest available chemogenomic and pharmacologic data is expected to better enable candidate prioritization and move development decisions earlier in the drug development process."
"We are pleased to join forces with Iconix to further explore the area of toxicogenomics because we are convinced that it will help revolutionize the drug discovery and development process," said John E. Blume, Ph.D., vice president of RNA Products at Affymetrix.
"By combining our gold-standard GeneChip microarray technology with Iconix' toxicology expertise, we believe we can accelerate research and improve the quality of drug candidates."
