NovaScreen's new side effect panel can help identify potential risk factors of drug candidates

By E. Janene Geiss

Philadelphia, Feb. 9 - NovaScreen Biosciences Corp., a Caliper Life Sciences company, said Thursday that its new General Side Effect II panel (GEN SEP II), an evolution from its original general side effect profile panel, incorporates a broader range of receptor subtype assays.

Many of these assays use human source material, which helps researchers and scientists gain a more clinically relevant understanding of drug side effect liabilities, according to a company news release.

GEN SEP II addresses side effects across a broad range of therapeutic areas including immunology, cancer, inflammation, pain, gastrointestinal, metabolic, neurological and cardiovascular, officials said.

"The GEN SEP II panel continues the NovaScreen tradition of high-quality side effect profiling," said Peter Carlson, vice president of NovaScreen, in the release.

"In today's discovery environment, gearing drug development efforts towards more clinically relevant experimentation is critical. Employing human receptor assays that cover a broad therapeutic range is one way to accomplish this," Carlson added.

The panel was designed to include assays that specifically address emerging drug approval requirements, officials said.

As an example, NovaScreen includes the hERG channel assay, an indicator of cardiovascular toxicity, in the GEN SEP II panel, officials said. Cardiovascular side effects are a huge concern in the drug development business, and identifying these issues as early as possible helps pharmaceutical companies avoid costly late-stage drug failures, officials said.

NovaScreen said it also offers a Side Effect Database that can be used in conjunction with GEN SEP II.

The Side Effect Database enables customers to compare GEN SEP II results with a database of more than 2,300 compounds including marketed, failed, withdrawn and over-the-counter drugs that have been screened through 65 ligand-binding and enzyme assays.

The database provides detailed chemical and biological activity pattern information to aid the identification and elimination of side effect and safety concerns, officials said.

NovaScreen is a Hanover, Md., provider of drug discovery and development services and products with a focus on in vitro (laboratory-based) screening assays and in silico (computer-based) predictive screening tools.

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