Gentronix and Apredica Ally to Create Predictive-Toxicology Service

Joint Service Offering to Increase Drug Development Success and the Safety of
New Drugs on the Market
WATERTOWN, Mass.--(Business Wire)--
Gentronix Limited, a genotoxicity product and services provider, and Apredica,
an ADME-Tox contract research laboratory, today announced a strategic alliance
to provide drug-discovery support services in the area of predictive toxicology.
The objective of the alliance is to reduce the failure rate of drugs in late
development, particularly due to toxicity, thereby improving the efficiency of
drug discovery and increasing assurance that new drugs are safe.

"Gentronix and Apredica have worked closely together for over a year," said Dr
Katya Tsaioun, President of Apredica. "We have developed a joint predictive
toxicology offering based on a set of assays that accurately predict many known
mechanisms of human toxicities." In addition to the joint service offering,
UK-based Gentronix and US-based Apredica have also agreed to become mutual
agents.

The alliance offers a new suite of predictive in vitro toxicology services to
help improve the speed and efficiency of drug development. Commenting on the
announcement, John Nicholson, Chairman and CEO of Gentronix said: "Early
prediction of genotoxicity and attrition-rate improvement is critical to the
success of drug discovery. Our alliance with Apredica allows our customers to
concentrate resources on compounds most likely to succeed in development, and to
select the best candidates for clinical trials sooner."

Drug discovery and development programs see many drug candidates fail in
clinical-trial stages, which are the most costly and time-consuming stages of
drug development. Dr Tsaioun explains: "Many of these failures could have been
avoided through the application of early ADME testing and toxicity profiling,
which can quickly and cost-effectively identify drug candidates with
characteristics that would preclude regulatory approval. Early identification of
these sure-to-fail candidates saves not only millions of dollars, but also
months or years of research time that could have gone towards producing a
successful drug candidate. Our joint service offering with Gentronix will
provide new information that drug-discovery teams can use to reduce the risk of
expensive, later stage failure, to increase the likelihood of program success,
and to accelerate their programs towards IND."

Reducing attrition rates in drug development, especially the later stages of
development, is critical to increasing the success and efficiency of drug
discovery. Identifying problems with new chemical entities as early as possible
allows resources to be directed towards chemistries with greater propensities to
advance to candidate selection and on to clinical evaluation.

About Apredica

Apredica is a specialist ADME-Tox CRO providing preclinical contract testing
services for the evaluation and optimization of the ADME-Tox properties of drug
candidates early in the drug-discovery process. Apredica maximizes the speed and
efficiency of drug discovery, and helps de-risk drug-discovery programs by
providing timely information on the safety, absorption, and toxicity properties
of small molecules to enable drug-discovery programs to focus their resources on
the molecules most likely to succeed.

About Gentronix Ltd

Gentronix provides services and solutions for a wide range of chemistry-driven
industries that help reduce attrition rates and ensure safer products.
Gentronix` primary focus is on providing better hazard identification assays for
genotoxicity through its GreenScreen and BlueScreen human cell assay
technology. All Gentronix assays are designed for use much earlier in drug and
compound discovery than the standard battery of genotoxicity tests, and provide
positive results that are more accurately predictive of in vivo risk than the
current in vitro mammalian assays. In addition, the high specificity of the
assays means that valuable compounds are not discarded due to false positive
toxicology.

Apredica
Watertown, Massachusetts, United States of America
Contact: Katya Tsaioun, Ph.D., President
Email: katya@apredica.com
Website: www.apredica.com
or
Gentronix Ltd
Manchester, United Kingdom
Contact: John Nicholson, Chairman and CEO
Phone: +44 (0)161 606 7267
Email: john.nicholson@gentronix.co.uk
Website: www.gentronix.co.uk

Copyright Business Wire 2009