Millipore Corporation and CXR Biosciences Introduce Toxicity Reporter Assay Panel

Millipore Corporation (Billerica, MA) and CXR Biosciences® (Dundee, UK) today launched ToxReporter™, a new panel of engineered cell lines and assays that can screen compounds for toxicity early in the drug discovery process.

Toxicity is one of the primary reasons why potential drug candidates fail during development.1,2 Identifying potential toxicity issues early in the drug discovery process can save time and money that would otherwise have been wasted on continued compound development.

The ToxReporter panel detects a variety of cellular responses linked to toxic stresses, including:
> Oxidative stress and anti-oxidant response
> Inflammatory response
> Cell cycle control
> DNA damage and apoptosis
> Hypoxia/angiogenesis
> Stress responses

“ToxReporter assays provide researchers with a great deal of flexibility,” said Debra MacIvor, Product Manager for Biomarkers and Immunoassays at Millipore. “Researchers can test multiple compounds or multiple cell lines using a single ELISA. In addition, the assays are quantitative and can be performed at multiple time points.”

“Development of the ToxReporter assays demonstrates CXR’s ability to develop novel screens that generate informative safety-relevant data earlier in the drug development process,” said Tom Shepherd, CEO of CXR Biosciences. “They are also used here at CXR to conduct Investigative and Mechanistic Toxicology projects with our clients.”

CXR Biosciences developed the novel cell lines exclusively for Millipore as part of a portfolio of innovative in vitro cell-based toxicology assays. Each cell line has been stably transfected with a common reporter biomarker downstream of response element promoters involved in specific toxicology pathways. The biomarker is expressed by the cells if the specific toxicology pathway is induced and detected in cell culture supernatant using a simple enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

The ToxReporter product line includes an engineered biomarker cell line, an assay Starter Pack specific for each cell line, and a complete ELISA kit that can be used for each cell line. Additional ToxReporter cell lines are under development, as well as a multiplexed format.