NEEDHAM, Massachusetts (USA) and BERLIN (GER) – September 28th, 2011 – The Drug Safety Executive Council (DSEC), an industry membership run by Cambridge Healthtech Associates (CHA), together with Metanomics Health GmbH, a BASF Group company, and leader in offering targeted and non-targeted metabolite profiling to healthcare customers, today announced the results of the technology assessment of MetaMap® Tox conducted by DSEC’s Technology Evaluation Consortium.
The consortium concluded that besides identifying key adverse events in test compounds comparable
to the gold standard histopathology, MetaMap Tox®, a platform that uses metabolite patterns of rat
plasma for early toxicity recognition of new drugs, provides significant additional value beyond results
typically received from a 28-day Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) tox study.
The precompetitive consortium consisting of 12 leading biopharmaceutical companies evaluated and
determined that there is value and utility in the use of MetaMap®Tox. In particular, the following areas
are complementary to standard 28 day GLP tox studies: assessment of toxicity mechanisms of action
and target organs, evaluation of systemic toxicity reactions, lead compound selection and toxicity
differentiation for compounds with similar chemical structure and pharmacology.
The platform has been developed by Metanomics Health GmbH, a BASF Group company, and leader
in offering targeted and non-targeted metabolite profiling to healthcare customers, and is already in
routine use within the BASF Group.
“We are pleased with the success of the evaluation of the MetaMap®Tox solution. The “MetaMap®Tox
platform provides pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to identify safety risks early in compound
development and to address options to diminish those risks.” said Ernie Bush, Vice President of
Collaborative Projects, DSEC.
“We are pleased that MetaMap® Tox is recognized as a high value solution for early safety
enablement in pharmaceutical research. The precompetitive DSEC platform offered us a unique
opportunity for close interaction with a large number of leading biopharmaceutical companies. The
feedback received has helped us to shape the final MetaMap®Tox product offer and at the same time opened a new application field in short term exploratory tox studies.” said Dr. Tim Bölke, Managing
Director, Metanomics Health GmbH.
“The external validation of MetaMap®Tox is a great achievement and acknowledges the 7 year long
development work of MetaMap®Tox by an interdisciplinary BASF team.“ added Ben van Ravenzwaay,
Senior Vice President BASF Toxicology and Ecology. “Already today MetaMap®Tox is delivering
important contributions towards faster decision making, significant cost savings and time to market
benefits for the BASF Group.”
About Cambridge Healthtech Associates and the Drug Safety Executive Council
CHA is the leading organizer of consortia in life sciences. CHA reduces the costs of R&D by bringing
companies together to work cooperatively. The Technology Evaluation Consortium determines the
scientific utility of predictive safety technologies by leveraging the expertise of biopharmaceutical
companies. CHA also manages DSEC, an online, peer membership of over 2,000 drug safety
leaders. Learn more at www.chacorporate.com and www.drugsafetycouncil.org. CHA is wholly-owned
by Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI).
About Metanomics Health GmbH
Metanomics Health GmbH, a BASF Group company, was founded in 2003 and is the world leading
company offering robust targeted and non-targeted comprehensive metabolite profiling services
(metabolomics) to healthcare customers. Serving pharma, nutrition, diagnostics companies and
academic partners, the state-of-the-art biomedical data interpretation with innovative bioinformatics
and data mining systems, enables discovery and validation of both, simple and complex metabolomic
biomarkers. Metanomics Health delivers novel biomarkers of disease and drug efficacy, increased
mechanistic understanding of drug action and adverse effects as well as insights into underlying
pathways to its partners, thereby providing actionable results for healthcare research and development
programs. Learn more at www.metanomics-health.de
CONTACT:
Drug Safety Executive Council (DSEC)
Contact: Alison Serrano
Tel: + 1 (781) 972-5482
Email:aserrano@drugsafetycouncil.org
Metanomics Health GmbH
United States:
Contact: Christopher Macri
Tel: +1 (201) 683-8183
Email: chris.macri@basf.com
Europe/Asia:
Contact: Peter Gräve
Tel: +49 (0) 621-60-28752
Email: peter.graeve@basf.com