Adheren Receives National Cancer Institute Grant For Drug Screening Platform

December 27, 2013 -- Adheren received a $350,000 National Cancer Institute IMAT (Innovative Molecular Analysis Technology) Phase II grant for developing and validating its single-cell array based whole blood cytotoxicity assay.

With the funds, Adheren will scale up production and further develop the real-time single-cell array based complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC), antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), and whole blood cytotoxicity assays, and validate their use with a wide range of tumor cells and therapeutic antibody drugs.

According to the company, previous cytotoxicity assays only provide dose-dependent data but not time-dependent drug efficacy data. The challenge is to isolate the drug-resistant cells after CDC or ADCC assay. Additionally, Adheren said it is also difficult to access drug efficacy in human whole blood.

Using its high-throughput cell positioning technology platform, the company said its new single-cell array based cytotoxicity assays will allow cytotoxicity analysis to be conducted on a single-cell basis and overcome the need for labor-intensive assays or radiochemical. The CAT assay platform is able to identify and recover live resistant cells for further culturing and analysis. It will also allow cytotoxicity assays or drug screening to be done in patient’s own blood, according to Adheren.

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