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here to printTeaming up to interrogate genes about ADME
April 2011
SHARING OPTIONS:
As part of the collaboration, RainDance and 454 Life
Sciences plan to commercially launch a core ADME gene screening research panel
that will be made available on both the 454 Life Sciences’ GS Junior and GS FLX
Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“For the first time, researchers can look beyond the
mutations found on current genotyping panels and discover novel chromosomal
changes and rare mutations associated with drug metabolism and adverse drug
events,” said Roopom Banerjee, president and CEO of RainDance Technologies, in
a news release about the deal. “Through our collaboration, Rain Dance and 454 Life
Sciences are combining the power of our microdroplet technology with 454 Life
Sciences’ proven next-generation sequencing platforms to provide a robust and
economical ADME sequencing solution.”
Current ADME research products are primarily limited to genotyping
common alleles, the companies note, and therefore lack the sensitivity, breadth
of genomic coverage and ability to identify previously unknown variants that
are important to drive scientific discovery and routine use.
“We started collaborating on a new ADME solution concept
about a year ago,” recalls James Brayer, RainDance’s product manager for
targeted sequencing. “The idea was born out of a mutual desire to bring the
power of next-generation sequencing to ADME research. We have a number of
mutual customers who are interested in an easy-to-use solution that targets all
of the core ADME-related genes in a high-throughput fashion.”
In choosing 454 Life Sciences as a partner, RainDance was
remaining true to its commitment to work with best-in-class partners, Brayer
says, “to enable a number of new targeted sequencing applications that would
benefit from the single-cell and single molecule resolution that is possible
with our microdroplet-based platform. We also believe that our platform plays a
central role in further advancing the routine use of next-generation sequencing
in research areas that have been difficult to examine using previous
technologies.”
“For the time being, targeted sequencing offers the most
cost-effective and tractable approach to translate the use of genomic
information into a medically relevant result,” he says. “Targeted resequencing
technologies such as RainDance’s provide an opportunity to focus on the genomic
regions with the highest likelihood of impacting research in a cost- and
time-efficient manner.”
RainDance and 454 Life Sciences maintain that their
collaboration will enable researchers to interrogate a set of core
pharmacokinetic and pharmacology genes, while at the same time to detect known
and unknown functional mutations associated with drug metabolism and response.
The impetus to deal with that concern wasn’t simply a
business opportunity for the two companies, but a push they felt from
customers, adds Ulrich Schwoerer, 454 Life Sciences’ head of global marketing,
who tells ddn that “companies and
research organizations involved in the discovery, development and manufacture
of medicines are under increasing pressure to bring down costs and, more
importantly, ensure the safety of products that are bound for, or already in,
consumer markets.”
Looking at his own company’s strategic goals, Schwoerer says
that 454 Life Sciences’ vision is to enable researchers, particularly in the
area of medical research, to do their jobs far better and more efficiently.
The two men say their companies continue to evaluate other
potential complementary applications and workflows, adding that they view this
new ADME panel as a proof of principle illustrating the capability of coupling
RainDance’s targeting methods with 454 Sequencing Systems. RainDance’s ability
to custom-design PCR amplicon panels that fit into the 454 Sequencing workflow
with minimal effort means that researchers can use this panel as a starting
point, but also have the flexibility to target any region of the genome they
are interested in, they say.
“Our collaboration with RainDance will result in solutions
that better equip scientists to leverage the GS FLX and GS Junior Systems to
effectively predict and understand drug activity early in the drug development
process,” said Christopher McLeod, president and CEO of 454 Life Sciences, in a
news release about the deal, adding that adverse drug events represent more
than two million hospitalizations and approximately $1 billion in healthcare cost
burden annually in the United States alone.
RainDance’s proprietary primer design method reportedly
enables highly accurate, consistent and reproducible next-generation sequencing
in ADME research, which is required for large-scale drug metabolism studies.
454 Life Sciences’ GS Junior and GS FLX Systems are said to provide
high-quality, long-sequencing reads which enable higher levels of coverage,
accuracy and quantitation with fewer dropouts, as well as detection of a wide
range of genomic variations, including SNPs, insertions, deletions and
multinucleotide polymorphisms.
RainDance and Ambry Genetics ink ADME analysis deal
LEXINGTON, Mass.—RainDance Technologies Inc. also recently
announced that it will collaborate with Ambry Genetics on the development and
commercialization of a comprehensive drug absorption, distribution, metabolism
and excretion (ADME) genetic screening panel for use on next-generation
sequencing (NGS) systems.
“Scientists interested in analyzing ADME-linked genes can
now look far beyond what existing genotyping panels reveal and discover the
novel chromosomal changes and rare variants associated with drug metabolism and
molecular pharmacology,” says Dr. Darren Link, RainDance’s co-founder and vice
president of research and development. “Through our collaboration with Ambry
Genetics, we are providing a solution that puts the most advanced ADME research
tools within reach of the many research organizations focused on reducing the
significant costs associated with failed drug trials and avoidable
hospitalizations.”
The announcement was made at the Society of Toxicology’s
50th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Financial terms of the collaboration
were not disclosed.
The new ADME panel will provide scientists with the capacity
to perform sequence analysis of entire coding regions associated with more than
220 key drug metabolism-linked genes, including transporters, receptors,
regulators and all pharmacodynamic and pharmacogenetic genes, as well as all
U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA)-identified pharmacogenomic biomarker
genes. The panel, provided as part of Ambry’s ADME sequencing service, will
leverage RainDance’s primer design methods and microdroplet-based RDT 1000
platform, which according to RainDance provides the highly accurate, consistent
and reproducible results required in ADME research and for most FDA drug
applications.
Code: E041110
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