RxP and BioTrove Announce Collaboration
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BioTrove and RxGen PrimaTox Inc. have announced a collaboration to provide gene expression and SNP assays designed to work equally well in primates and humans, thus bridging the gap between pre-clinical and clinical drug safety analysis.
RxP's Tox-Optimum™ gene expression assays include the most toxicologically relevant genes, probes for which have been optimized to work in samples from either humans or non-human primates.
The Tox-Optimum™ assays have been designed to work specifically and exclusively on BioTrove's OpenArray™ platform, which allows simultaneous quantitative analysis of several thousand genes by quantitative PCR.
RxP will provide the Tox-Optimum™ assays as either stand-alone products, or as a service that utilizes RxP's toxicological resources.
BioTrove will provide the OpenArray™ platform and will manufacture the Tox-Optimum™ assays to RxP's specifications.
RxP will also provide similar assays that measure expression of thousands of other genes relevant to drug efficacy that have also been optimized for use in either primates or humans.
"By combining BioTrove's extremely powerful platform technology for gene expression and SNP analysis with RxP's deep experience and unique resources in molecular toxicology, we believe we are in a terrific position to identify the most clinically relevant biomarkers and polymorphisms for drug safety," said Spencer Farr, Ph.D., CEO of RxP.
"Under this exclusive agreement with BioTrove, we bring individualized drug safety assessment much closer to reality."
"We looked long and hard to find a platform that provides the sensitivity and specificity of BioTrove's OpenArray platform."
"When it comes to gene expression and polymorphism, BioTrove knows how to measure them; when it comes to toxicological relevance, we know what to measure....it's a perfect combination," he added.
"Our strategic collaboration with RxGen creates the opportunity for a leading position in the field of molecular toxicology," said Alan Carter, BioTrove's Chief of Commercial Operations.
"Previous work in toxicogenomics primarily utilized hybridization arrays to analyze tens of thousands of rat transcripts in order to build predictive models."
"RxGen's focus on clinically relevant rat and primate models, along with qPCR validated cross species transcripts, will create a new, high-throughput sample analysis solution for the pharmaceutical research community."
