BioIVT Acquires Optivia Biotechnology, Adding Transporter Assay Products and Services to its ADME-Tox Portfolio

WESTBURY, N.Y., July 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BioIVT, a leading provider of research models and services for drug development, today announced that it has acquired Santa Clara, CA-based Optivia Biotechnology and its comprehensive portfolio of transporter assays, multi-transporter models, transporter systems biology, and molecular transport research solutions.

"BioIVT is partnering with biopharmaceutical customers not just on single projects but on their entire R&D pipeline. We continue to build and enhance our product and research service capabilities to become the partner of choice for our clients and the industry experts in specialty application areas," said BioIVT Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Gatz. "We are delighted that Optivia is joining BioIVT as we position to become the world leader in transporter sciences. Optivia will be an important addition to BioIVT's leading ADME-Toxicology model systems franchise, complementing the capabilities of our recent acquisitions of Qualyst Transporter Solutions and Ascendance Biotechnology."

"We share BioIVT's passion, energy and vision for becoming pharma's optimal specialty outsourced drug discovery and development partner," said Optivia Founder, President and CEO Yong Huang, PhD. "We look forward to joining BioIVT and being able to offer our customers a broader range of products and services but with the same high quality, attention to detail, and excellent customer service that they have learned to expect from Optivia."

Transport proteins (transporters) govern drug uptake and disposition, and hence drug concentration, in the blood and vital organs such as the liver, kidney, heart, lungs, and brain. As a result, transporter effects are evaluated early in the lead candidate selection and optimization process in drug R&D programs.

Underscoring their important role in drug safety testing, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA), and Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) request that in vitro studies be conducted on nine specific transporters for drug-drug interaction (DDI) assessment and drug labeling.

BioIVT's portfolio now includes all of Optivia's products, including its Opti-Expression™ technology, Opti-Target™, Opti-DDI™, and Opti-ADME™ Transporter Services Panels, and its TransFlex™ Single Transporter and Multi-Transporter Assay Plates.

Optivia's Opti-Expression technology allows rapid, robust and consistent expression of various transporters in polarized mammalian cell monolayers with much greater scalability and flexibility than is possible with stably transfected cell lines.

Optivia's Opti-Target Transporter Services Panel consists of a wide variety of validated and novel transporter targets implicated in diseases, toxicity, and tissue targeting. The company's Opti-DDI Transporter Services Panel enables FDA-, EMA-, and PMDA-compliant transporter DDI studies to be conducted. Its Opti-ADME Transporter Services Panel consists of major transporters that affect ADME properties of a variety of drugs. Studying them provides a better understanding of drug bioavailability, tissue distribution, excretion, and inter-individual variability in drug responses.

Optivia's staff will join BioIVT's PHASEZERO® Research Services team and provide a full range of transporter services, including screening studies for lead discovery and optimization, profiling and mechanism of action studies for lead selection, and other studies to support regulatory submissions.

Financial details about the transaction were not disclosed.

About Optivia Biotechnology Inc.

Since bringing the first full panel of FDA- and EMA- compliant transporter drug-drug interaction (DDI) assays to market, Optivia has been the leading provider of high-quality transporter assay services. Optivia is a thought leader in expanding the utility of transporter research in areas as diverse as pharmacokinetics, toxicology, therapeutic target discovery, and basic biology research. With the world's largest portfolio of transporter assays, novel multi-transporter models, and customized molecular transport research solutions, Optivia is committed to understanding the complex drug transport processes for improving drug safety and efficacy.

About BioIVT

BioIVT, formerly BioreclamationIVT, is a leading global provider of research models and value-added research services for drug discovery and development. We specialize in control and disease-state biospecimens including human and animal tissues, cell products, blood and other biofluids. Our unmatched portfolio of clinical specimens directly supports precision medicine research and the effort to improve patient outcomes by coupling comprehensive clinical data with donor samples. Our PHASEZERO® Research Services team works collaboratively with clients to provide target and biomarker validation, phenotypic assays to characterize novel therapeutics, clinical assay development and in vitro hepatic modeling solutions. And as the premier supplier of ADME-toxicology model systems, including hepatocytes and subcellular fractions, BioIVT enables scientists to better understand the pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism of newly-discovered compounds and their effects on disease processes. By combining our technical expertise, exceptional customer service, and unparalleled access to biological specimens, BioIVT serves the research community as a trusted partner in elevating science. For more information, please visit www.bioivt.com or follow the company on Twitter @BioIVT.

BioIVT Contact: Courtney Noah, Vice President of Marketing, 516-483-1196
Media Contact: Lisa Osborne, Rana Healthcare Solutions, 206-992-5245, [email protected]

SOURCE BioIVT

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