Sigma® Life Science Announces Scientific Advisory Board to Drive ADME/Tox Program
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Sigma Life Science, has announced the formation of an ADME/Toxicology Scientific Advisory Board (ADME/Tox SAB) in an effort to help drive development of new cell-based assays using the Company's innovative CompoZr ZFN technology.
The role of the SAB will be to identify emerging trends in pre-clinical pharmaceutical testing, in an effort to enable Sigma Life Science to meet the changing needs of the ADME/Tox market. The board is comprised of pre-eminent scientists and key opinion leaders from both academia and industry, including:
• Dr. J. Scott Daniels, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
• Dr. Judith K. Jones, The Degge Group, Ltd.
• Dr. Curtis Klaassen, University of Kansas Medical Center
• Dr. Russell Thomas, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences
“The expertise of the ADME/Tox SAB, together with the advanced genome editing capabilities of CompoZr ZFNs, can put Sigma Life Science at the forefront of development in this area,” said Dr. Daniels.
Daniels continued, “Application of these genomic tools within the ADME/Tox sector should help to improve the accuracy and biological relevance of ADME assays and provide toxicologists with better predictive tools for pre-clinical testing, ultimately reducing the attrition of drug candidates in subsequent clinical trials.”
The first products to be developed under this initiative - due for release later this year - are designed to address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency requirements for in vitro testing of candidate drug interactions with known efflux transporter proteins.
These knockout (KO) cell lines are intended to allow researchers to investigate drug transporter interactions, providing more biologically relevant data to avoid costly failures during subsequent clinical testing.
Dr Supriya Shivakumar, Global Commercial Marketing Manager for Functional Genomics at Sigma Life Science added, “Our CompoZr ZFN technology offers precise, complete knockout of the transporter gene of interest, allowing direct comparison between parent and KO cell lines to screen for potential drug-transporter interactions. This strategy offers highly predictable and reproducible testing, and eliminates the off-target effects associated with many of the molecular tools currently used for these screens.”
Formation of the ADME/Tox SAB is the first step in Sigma Life Science’s strategic program to develop novel assays for this market. In addition to creating a range of novel cell-based assays in-house, this enabling technology of Sigma-Aldrich® has the potential to improve and expand the scope of many current cell-based assays in the sector. The Company is actively seeking collaborations to deliver solutions that meet the needs of the ADME/Tox market.
