Asterand recognises the benefits of utilising human tissue during the drug discovery and development process to help provide better, safer medicines to treat human disease
Clinical failures could be reduced through the use of human tissue in pharmaceutical research.
"The value of using human tissue during drug discovery and drug development within the pharmaceutical industry is becoming increasingly important" says Randal Charlton, chief executive at Asterand.
"There is a compelling need to reduce the unacceptable failure rate associated with converting drug development candidates into safe, effective medicines".
"While no amount of testing on human tissue can accurately predict clinical success, identifying early where a drug target is expressed in the human body and how the functional response to a drug compares to that in animals can provide a useful insight, helping to highlight potential failures before entering the clinic".
Asterand says it recognises the benefits of utilising human tissue during the drug discovery and development process to help provide better, safer medicines to treat human disease, and is working with many of the leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to support their drug discovery and development programmes.
Located in the UK and North America, Asterand is a preclinical CRO that is focused on providing drug discovery services using human tissue.
Asterand can help identify where drug targets are located in the human body and therefore potentially predict which organs are most likely to suffer from side effects or safety issues.
This, along with testing potential drugs in target and off-target tissues, can help to establish if the drug responses are similar to those observed in animal models.
Asterand has established, and maintains, one of the most effective human tissue supply networks in the world with over 70 donor sites.
Asterand provides tissues, RNA, DNA and biofluids as well as services in functional pharmacology, biochemical and safety pharmacology and gene/protein profiling in a wide range of therapeutic areas.
These tools and services are used in target validation to identify which targets are relevant to human disease and in compound validation, to aid prioritisation of pre-clinical candidate compounds prior to entry into the clinic.
With ten years of experience in drug discovery services, Asterand is well placed to support drug discovery and development in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
