CRX.L Regulatory News (CRX)

Cyprotex PLC

("Cyprotex" or "the Company")

Launch of New Solution to Predict Preclinical Toxicity

17th November 2015; 

Cyprotex PLC (AIM:CRX), a specialist Contract Research Organisation (CRO), announced today the launch of its new in silico modelling solution, chemTox, which predicts genotoxicity and rat LD50 directly from chemical structure. The LD50 is a commonly determined parameter in preclinical toxicity studies, representing the dose that causes death in 50% of the test group. Using models such as those in chemTox to predict this parameter will have obvious ethical benefits in reducing animal toxicity testing.

chemTox has been developed by Cyprotex's Scientific Computing Group using quantitative structure property relationship (QSPR) modelling, a technique that relates calculable chemical characteristics of a molecule to important properties such as its toxicity. As chemTox requires no experimental data inputs it can be used as a virtual screening tool prior to chemical synthesis. There are significant cost benefits to this approach as chemTox can be applied as an early stage filter for directing chemistry and prioritising subsequent in vitro screening by taking into account the predicted safety of the molecule. Cyprotex not only provide the in silico predictions but can provide a full tiered screening strategy with safety of the molecules substantiated using a panel of in vitro toxicity assays.

By utilising chemTox alongside complementary virtual screening tools such as chemPKTM, which was launched by Cyprotex in July, it is possible to predict both preclinical safety and human exposure in combination. Both systems operate on a similar KNIME workflow management platform which allows further integration with many other cheminformatics, analytics and modelling tools.

Dr Anthony Baxter, Cyprotex's Chief Executive Officer, comments: 'The ethical concerns over animal testing are intensifying and new approaches which reduce or in the future replace animal safety testing are a key focus. Virtual screening tools such as chemTox address this need, and are becoming widely used in industries such as cosmetics and personal care where a complete ban on animal testing has been enforced.'

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About Cyprotex PLC

Cyprotex is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (CRX). It has sites at Macclesfield and Alderley Park, both of which are near Manchester in the UK, and at Watertown, MA and Kalamazoo, MI in the US. The Company was established in 1999 and works with more than 1300 partners within the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, cosmetics and personal care industry and the chemical industry. Cyprotex acquired Apredica and the assets of Cellumen Inc. in August 2010 and the combined business provides support for a wide range of experimental and computational ADME-Tox and PK services. The acquisition of the assets and business of CeeTox in January 2014 has enabled Cyprotex to expand its range of services to target the personal care, cosmetics and chemical industries. In 2015, Cyprotex launched its new bioscience division to expand its capabilities into phenotypic and target based screening. The Company's core capabilities include high quality in vitro ADME screening services, mechanistic toxicology and high content toxicology screening services, including our proprietary CellCiphr® toxicity prediction technology, bioscience services, predictive modelling solutions, including Cloe® PK, chemPKTM and chemTox, and a range of skin, ocular and endocrine disruption services. For more information, see www.cyprotex.com.