Applied Biosystems and Asuragen are to collaborate with the Critical Path Institute (C-Path) to improve drug toxicity screening.
The companies will link with C-Path's Predictive Safety Testing Consortium to develop a predictive gene signature panel that will allow pharmaceutical companies to screen potential therapeutics quickly and easily for toxic effects in pre-clinical samples.
As part of the collaboration, C-Path, Applied Biosystems and Asuragen will partner to develop a panel of assays with gene targets determined to be associated with carcinogenicity in laboratory rats, a common model organism for pharmaceutical testing.
The collaborators will also use the Applied Biosystems assays to determine and differentiate effects that are genotoxic from non-genotoxic modes of action to assist in risk assessment.
The biomarker panel will be based on Applied Biosystems's Taqman Gene Signature Array and real-time PCR technology.
