Wafergen Biosystems and IR Biosciences Holdings have established a wound-healing research collaboration with the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center.
Under the terms of the collaboration, UT Southwestern researchers will conduct preclinical and clinical studies to evaluate the efficacy of Homspera, Immuneregen's wound healing drug candidate.
As part of these studies, Wafergen's Smartchip real-time PCR system will be used to understand the mechanism of action of Homspera.
The collaborators believe that these studies may demonstrate the key role that the capabilities of the Smartchip system can play in the field of drug development, particularly in validating relevant gene expression biomarkers and assessing their impact on patient responses to treatment.
The studies are expected to provide Immuneregen with important data to support potential applications for Homspera in a range of therapeutic applications.
These studies, which provide the first opportunity for the Smartchip platform to assist in the drug development process, are expected to demonstrate various Smartchip system capabilities.
These include: the support of preclinical and clinical studies; validating potential biomarkers in many samples with rapid turnaround time, allowing for expedited drug development decisions; and high sensitivity and accuracy with limited amounts of samples from needle biopsies.
Alnoor Shivji, Wafergen's chairman and chief executive officer, said: 'We expect this collaboration to provide a clear demonstration of the value that the Smartchip system can offer in the area of drug discovery and development, particularly as it pertains to harnessing the potential of biomarkers.' Hal Siegel, Immuneregen's chief scientific officer, said: 'The reality is that many physiological processes consist of a dynamic interplay among many biochemical factors.
'Unfortunately, many analytical tools provide a static snapshot and can thus be misleading.
'The ability to rapidly analyse hundreds of samples taken over the course of the healing response promises to provide us with unique insights into the healing process and the role our developmental candidate plays in enhancing the rate at which wounds heal.' In January 2009, Wafergen and UT Southwestern established a separate collaboration under which UT Southwestern is conducting novel research projects using the Smartchip real-time PCR system in order to identify and validate gene expression biomarkers related to wound healing.
The Smartchip real-time PCR system is designed as the first whole genome high-throughput gene expression real-time PCR platform.
This system, combined with next-generation chemistry and optimised assays being developed by Wafergen, is intended to deliver speed and cost advantages to researchers in the gene expression and genotyping markets.
Based on collaborations established with leading research institutions, Wafergen believes that the Smartchip real-time PCR system is positioned as the platform of choice for biomarker discovery and validation.
It is estimated that the genetic-analysis market alone (comprised of gene expression and genotyping analysis) had approximately USD2.4bn (GBP1.7bn) in worldwide revenues in 2006 (USD1.74bn for gene expression and USD650m for genotyping).
Wafergen believes that the Smartchip real-time PCR system will be the first platform to combine the high-throughput capability and cost efficiencies of existing microarrays with the sensitivity and accuracy of real-time PCR.
Specifically, the system's high-density, rapid-cycling configuration is expected to provide significant throughput levels while offering discovery and validation capabilities in a single step.
The result is expected to be the ability to conduct gene expression research at a fraction of the time and cost currently produced by existing instrument systems.
The system will provide content-ready chips with gene panels optimised for cancer, toxicology and whole genome.
The system will be preloaded with some of the reaction components.
At the same time, it will only require a very small sample size as compared to other technologies and platforms and will offer real-time detection and sophisticated readout options while assuring detection sensitivity and temperature uniformity across chips.
Wafergen Biosystems is a developer of genetic analysis systems and IR Biosciences Holdings is a development-stage biotechnology company focused on the research, development and licensing of Immuneregen's Homspera.
