Thermo Fisher Scientific Introduces Liver Toxicity Testing Solution for Drug Development

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, today introduced the ToxInsight DILI Assay Cartridge, a groundbreaking new tool for assessing the liver toxicity risk of chemical compounds. It will help pharmaceutical companies improve their productivity by better assessing liver toxicity early in the drug development process, specifically reducing the risk of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) – the primary reason for post-market drug withdrawal.

Designed to be used with the Thermo Scientific ToxInsight IVT image cytometry platform, the ToxInsight DILI Assay Cartridge identifies drug induced hepatotoxicity by simultaneous detection of multiplexed toxicity biomarkers in single cells. It includes all the reagents, assay protocols, analysis and data reporting capabilities to profile compounds for hepatotoxicity with high sensitivity and specificity. The cartridge has been extensively validated with a known hepatotoxic compound “truth-set” on a range of hepatic cell-lines, including rat and human primary hepatocytes.

Key to the predictive power of the DILI Assay Cartridge is powerful analytical and visualization software that makes sense of the multi-parameter data from the cartridge. The software supports analysis and toxicity prediction of compounds with broad mechanisms of action because it monitors multiple, independent toxicity indicators. Intuitive visualization tools provide users with graphs of individual responses for selected compounds and of predicted toxicity, so they can swiftly report a compound’s risk of liver injury in minutes.

Compared to traditional biochemical assays (such as cell count, LDH, MTT etc.), the ToxInsight IVT platform makes multiple measurements on each cell, generating a phenotype rather than a single measurement. This automated, bench-top platform is easy to use and provides physiologically relevant toxicity assays early in the drug discovery process, eliminating reliance on late-stage histopathology or animal studies. The ToxInsight IVT platform not only profiles compounds for their toxicity risk, but it also determines the mechanism of action of any toxicity detected, enabling researchers to rapidly understand the therapeutic index of a compound series in minutes.

The DILI Assay and ToxInsight IVT platform will be exclusively demonstrated at booth #675 at the 2011 Society of Toxicology & ToxExpo, March 6-11, Washington, D.C.