Acquired company comes with Cellumen’s Cellular Systems Biology IP and assets.

U.K.-based preclinical ADME services specialist Cyprotex is buying U.S.preclinical CRO Apredica for £2.68 million (about $4.26 million) in cash and shares. The deal follows immediately on from Apredica’s acquisition of Cellumen’s Cellular Systems Biology (CSB™) platform and high-content toxicology services.

Cyprotex says taking over Apredica and the latter’s newly acquired assets will speed its entry into the predictive mechanistic toxicology services market, a move that will be boosted further by the opening of Cyprotex’ new U.K. toxicology laboratory in October. The combined company will effectively allow Cyprotex to offer its customers 11 additional services, primarily in toxicology, and double its share in the U.S. ADME toxicology market, the firm states.

Cellumen’s CSB IP acquired by Apredica involves analysis of the interacting network of genes, proteins, and metabolic processes involved in both normal and abnormal cellular functioning. Cellumen claims that rather than analyzing one to several cellular parameters as performed in standard high-content screening assays, the CSB approach allows the profiling of many more cellular parameters that represent a cellular systems response. The CSB profile generated identifies key systems response parameters that define the state of the cellular system, such as a cellular model of disease, toxicity profile, or patient sample profile. Proprietary panels of biomarkers and reagents are used in each application, and a database of response profiles is maintained for potential predictive capabilities.

New technologies such as Cellumen’s CSB platform will “simultaneously improve our ability to detect mechanisms of human toxicity, reduce the time and cost of developing safe and efficacious drugs, and pave the way toward developing toxicology models that are more predictive of human biology than currently available models,” comments Katya Tsaioun, Ph.D., Apredica CEO, who has been appointed Cyprotex CSO. “As human biology-based models improve, they will reduce and ultimately replace animal toxicology models.” Apredica recorded revenues of £1.05 million (about $1.64 million) in 2009, and an annual growth rate of 72%. The firm says it currently has 173 customers worldwide.

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