Affymetrix, Iconix collaborate to develop means of assessing drug toxicity

By Angela McDaniels

Seattle, Feb. 7 - Affymetrix Inc. and Iconix Pharmaceuticals Inc. said they have signed a collaborative agreement to develop solutions to aid in the study of the toxicological and pharmacological properties of drugs and drug candidates.

The companies will combine Affymetrix's GeneChip expression arrays and Iconix's DrugMatrix 640 compound reference database and analysis methods to provide a means of gathering detailed information on a drug candidate's toxicological liabilities and pharmacological properties.

Using such tools, researchers will be able to quickly compare gene expression profiles to the Iconix's Drug Signatures library to help predict the impact that gene expression changes may have on biological pathways critical to the body's toxic response to drugs, the companies said.

"We are pleased to work with Affymetrix on this program which we believe will remove what has been a major hurdle to the widespread application of toxicogenomics to drug discovery," Don Halbert, executive vice president of research and development at Iconix Pharmaceuticals, said in a company news release.

"The new paradigm will streamline all the steps required to help companies put gene expression data into the context of toxicology.

"Arming pharmaceutical companies with the fullest available chemogenomic and pharmacologic data is expected to better enable candidate prioritization and move development decisions earlier in the drug development process."

Iconix Pharmaceuticals is based in Mountain View, Calif., and uses chemistry and genomics to profile drug candidates.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Affymetrix develops microarray technology for use by the pharmaceutical, diagnostic and biotechnology industries as well as academic, government and not-for-profit research institutes.

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