Sigma Life Science forms ADME/Toxicology advisory board
To drive development of cell-based assays using CompoZr ZFN technology
The role of the SAB will be to identify emerging trends in pre-clinical pharmaceutical testing, to enable Sigma Life Science to meet the changing needs of the ADME/Tox market.
The board comprises scientists and leaders from academia and industry, including: Scott Daniels, Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Judith Jones, The Degge Group; Curtis Klaassen, University of Kansas Medical Center; and Russell Thomas, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences.
‘The expertise of the ADME/Tox SAB, together with the advanced genome editing capabilities of CompoZr ZFNs, can put Sigma Life Science at the forefront of development in this area,’ said Daniels.
‘Application of these genomic tools within the ADME/Tox sector should help to improve the accuracy and biological relevance of ADME assays and provide toxicologists with better predictive tools for pre-clinical testing.’
The first products to be developed under this initiative – due for release later this year – will address the US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency requirements for in vitro testing of candidate drug interactions with known efflux transporter proteins. These knockout (KO) cell lines allow researchers to investigate drug-transporter interactions, providing more biologically relevant data to avoid costly failures during subsequent clinical testing.
