CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- HemoShear LLC, a biotechnology research company and leading developer of human and animal cell-based surrogate systems for discovery and assessment of new drug compounds, announced today that they have published a key Review article entitled, Organotypic systems in drug metabolism and toxicity: challenges and opportunities, in Expert Opin. Drug Metab. Toxicol. Authored by Ajit Dash, MD, PhD and HemoShear co-founders Brett R. Blackman, PhD and Brian R. Wamhoff, PhD, this Expert Opinion examines the various approaches to recreating meaningful human biology on the bench and traces the evolution of organotypic systems while discussing intrinsic challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Furthermore, they cite literature that is the foundation of several biotechnology research companies addressing this issue and discuss major government-funded initiatives to aid the development of these systems.
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"High-throughput screening cell-based tools still serve a purpose in compound screening campaigns, but they continue to fail in predicting in vivo response for important and costly pipeline decisions," said Dr. Dash, Director of HemoShear's Liver Surrogate Systems Division. "Further, the limitations of animal models in predicting human safety or drug efficacy continue to negatively impact drug companies' confidence as they make important decisions about whether to enter human clinical trials."
"Our vision as a company is to develop meaningful human-relevant systems so that we can help our biopharmaceutical partners make more meaningful decisions in their pre-clinical pipelines, greatly reducing the risk in their portfolio," said Dr. Wamhoff. "Initial results in our vascular and liver surrogate systems indicate that we can recreate human in vivo biology and response on the bench, which is extremely exciting! Continued development and validation of these systems and disease systems is important to our partners. The science is groundbreaking and the data human-relevant. We really are thinking about drug discovery from the human perspective."
About HemoShear, LLC
HemoShear LLC is a biotechnology research company that combines its scientific expertise with its proprietary platform technology in research collaborations with pharmaceutical companies to accelerate drug discovery and development. HemoShear has expertise in the areas of human and animal biology, bioinformatics and molecular profiling for target identification and validation, cell-signaling pathway analysis, sophisticated methods to quantify target genes and proteins, assessment of molecular pharmacology, and methods to determine mechanisms of action for drug efficacy and safety.
HemoShear's technology platform can be adapted to replicate the biology of human or animal organ systems in both healthy and disease-prone states by applying physiologically accurate hemodynamic forces to primary cell cultures. HemoShear is currently collaborating with several large pharmaceutical companies on programs that span the drug discovery and development spectrum. HemoShear is a privately held company located in Charlottesville, Virginia. To learn more about HemoShear and our research, please visit our website at www.hemoshear.com.
SOURCE HemoShear, LLC
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