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
