Mitsubishi Pharma signs site license agreement for ExonHit Therapeutics’ Safe-Hit® predictive toxicology system
ExonHit Therapeutics, a private drug discovery company, announced today that Mitsubishi Pharma entered into a site license agreement for the use of Safe-Hit®, a micro-array based system developed by ExonHit which allows evaluation and ranking of compounds for toxicity. Safe-Hit® allows companies to invest their time and resources into compounds with a lower chance of failure in development due to safety issues. This agreement follows a one year evalution of Safe-Hit® by Mitsubishi.
“A one year pilot study with our proprietary compounds indicated the potential of Safe-Hit® to successfully predict the ranking of in vivo animal toxicity. We have decided to further evaluate the feasibility of this technology under the site license agreement.” said Dr. Hiroaki Inoue, the general manager of the toxicology laboratory at Mitsubishi Pharma.
“We are honored to extend our relationship with Mitsubishi Pharma in the area of toxicology. We are particularly pleased that Mitsubishi has chosen to deploy our Safe-Hit® technology in its R&D group. This decision was made following a year of evaluation of Safe-Hit® by Mitsubishi in close collaboration with ExonHit researchers. The value that Safe-Hit® can bring to critical decisions in drug development is underlined by this new agreement.” stated Bruno Tocqué of ExonHit.
Safe-Hit® is a microarray that incorporates several technological and conceptual innovations. The content on the microarray was derived by applying ExonHit Therapeutics’ pioneering DATASTM (Differential Analysis of Transcripts with Alternative Splicing) profiling technology to a proprietary model of cellular stress. DATAS™ allowed the identification of the stress-specific nucleic acid signatures in the model system, and thus allowed the creation of a library of splicing events specific to toxicity that are generally distinct from changes induced by the intended pharmacological activity of drugs. Safe-Hit® can be used with both human and rodent cells, making it particularly useful for the various needs of pharmaceutical R&D.
ExonHit Therapeutics
www.exonhit.com
ExonHit Therapeutics is a privately-held drug discovery and development company committed to advancing the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases with serious unmet medical needs, many of which are age related, by identifying disease-related changes in a biological process called alternative RNA splicing.
ExonHit’s patented genomic profiling technology, DATAS™ (Differential Analysis of Transcripts with Alternative Splicing), identifies disease-related changes in alternative RNA splicing events. RNA splicing is altered during the onset and progression of disease. By distinguishing discrete alternative RNA splicing events, ExonHit is able to identify landmarks of disease.
DATAS™ is central to ExonHit drug discovery and development programs. The Company’s most advanced drug, Ikomio®, is currently in the final stages of Phase III trials for Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In addition, the profiling technology is utilized in broader applications by several external therapeutic and diagnostic collaborators. ExonHit Therapeutics, founded in 1997, is headquartered in Paris, France and has a US subsidiary headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The Company has 59 employees worldwide.
About Safe-Hit®
Safe-Hit® is a research tool that allows researchers to rank compounds for safety by detecting cellular stress following treatment of model systems with compounds, and a library of splicing events specific to toxicity. The library contains nucleic acids that represent alternative splicing events obtained after over-expression of p53 « the guardian of the genome », an integration point for events leading to cell cycle arrest or initiation of programmed cell death. The extent of the deregulation of the expression of these clones allows a ranking of compounds on the particular tissues tested. This library is generally used on a microarray platform. Since this library can be used with both human and rodent cells, it is particularly useful for the various needs of pharmaceutical research and development. A patent relating to our Safe-Hit® toxicity assay was granted in both the United States and France.
