ExonHit Announces Availability of SpliceArray™ Portal

ExonHit Therapeutics S.A. has announced the availability of its internet portal that will enable the biomedical community to order microarrays designed to study the expression of the entire human genome.

Until recently, ExonHit focused on certain gene families of interest for drug discovery.

With the SpliceArray™ portal, microarrays can now be ordered from ExonHit's new catalogue, which now offers 75 microarrays.

In addition, this portal gives researchers, from public and private laboratories alike, access to the genome expression map, recently established by ExonHit.

Finally, it is designed to enable scientists to submit their list of favourite genes, for free, in order to view the associated splicing events, and create customized microarrays.

The microarrays can then be manufactured on different platforms based on agreements between ExonHit and Agilent or Affymetrix.

"I had the opportunity to beta-test this portal and found it to be a unique and very useful tool," said Dr. Stefan Stamm, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg.

"I particularly liked the ability to work specifically from my list of favourite genes and swiftly design microarrays with probes covering the expression of all known and yet to discover transcripts."

"ExonHit's researchers have created an amazing marketing tool. One can order any microarray containing nucleic probes for the identification of human gene variant expressed in tissue," stated Bruno Tocque, CEO of ExonHit Therapeutics.

"This commercial platform will allow us to further increase our revenues from genomic research tools."

"Such revenues come from our service activities, as well as from sales of microarrays ordered through our SpliceArray™ portal, or through Agilent's catalogue, and licenses granted to end-users."

"To this end, I am glad that Merck & Co Inc, already, has recently licensed research rights from one of our basic patent."