As part of the collaboration, Critical Path Institute (C-Path), Applied Biosystems, and Asuragen will partner to develop a panel of assays with gene targets determined to be associated with carcinogenicity in laboratory rats, a common model organism for pharmaceutical testing.
The collaborators will also use the Applied Biosystems assays to determine and differentiate effects that are genotoxic from non-genotoxic modes of action to assist in risk assessment. The new biomarker panel will be based on Applied Biosystems’s TaqMan gene signature array and real-time polymerase chain reaction technology.
William Mattes, director of predictive safety testing consortium at C-Path, said: “We expect this collaboration will facilitate broader utility of genomic biomarkers of toxicity across the industry in order to enable the early prediction and mechanistic understanding of potential carcinogens in preclinical research.”