Icoria and ADMET Technologies Collaborate
Icoria, a biotechnology company dedicated to finding new ways of detecting and treating human disease, has announced that it will use its metabolomics and gene expression methodologies to characterise ADMET Technologies, Inc.?s human adult hepatocytes, to improve their value as a predictive toxicology screening tool in the early stages of drug development. ADMET Technologies is a commercial supplier of primary human hepatocytes for research purposes and is developing in vitro and in vivo tools for the improvement of drug discovery and development.
Under the agreement, ADMET will provide Icoria with liver cells from patients with a diversity of clinical conditions such as fatty liver disease and diabetes. Icoria will use its metabolomics, gene expression and pathway analysis technologies to develop biological profiles and correlate these with differing sensitivities to various classes of known hepatotoxic drugs. This information will be used by ADMET to identify cells that could be used in predictive toxicology assays that would enable pharmaceutical companies to identify subtle or idiosyncratic liver toxicity at an early stage in the development process.