Ingenium and Oxagen enter INGENOtyping agreement

Ingenium Pharmaceuticals, of Munich in Germany, and UK biopharmaceutical company Oxagen have entered into a collaboration in which Ingenium will use its INGENOtyping technology platform to develop animal models with defined gene alterations. The focus of the collaboration will be genes relating to metabolic diseases that have been located by Oxagen's target identification technology.

Ingenium's INGENOtyping technology is a high-speed second-generation tool for the in vivo validation of drug targets; it can provide in as little as four months a series of mammalian models that carry unique genetic alterations in any target gene of interest. Oxagen is building a novel drug pipeline based on targets validated in man through its genetics platform. The company specialises in target identification and validation in inflammatory and metabolic diseases and is creating a pipeline of novel, highly validated drug targets for licensing to partner companies and for in house development, together with panels of molecular diagnostic markers.

'As we move further towards our goal of being a drug discovery company we need to access high-quality technologies to assist our target validation,' said Dr Mark Payton, ceo of Oxagen. 'Ingenium offers a very practical solution to our needs.'