Cytokinetics Announces Cytometrix™ Technologies Development Partner Program
Participants to Validate and Accelerate Development of Cellular Phenotyping Technologies
South San Francisco, CA - January 9, 2002
Cytokinetics, Inc. today announced its Cytometrix™ Technologies Development Partner Program comprising four leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The Company’s participants in this program are: Eisai Research Institute, Novartis Pharma AG (NYSE: NVS), Tularik Inc. (Nasdaq: TLRK) and Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VRTX). Through this innovative program, Cytokinetics will work with each participant to conduct activities aimed at the extended validation and further development of its Cytometrix™ automated cellular phenotyping technologies.
Cytokinetics’ uncommon speed and progress in oncology drug discovery has been driven by its unique drug discovery platform that, from its origins, has prioritized integration with automated cell-based technologies. Through this program, the Development Partners will have an opportunity to further validate the Cytometrix™ automated cellular phenotyping technologies over a broader diversity of pharmaceutical targets and mechanisms of action as well as provide inputs to its next-stage development. Specific terms of the Program have not been disclosed.
“We are excited to be working with these pioneering companies as we refine and optimize our automated cellular phenotyping technologies,” stated Dr. Nolan Sigal, Cytokinetics’ Executive Vice President of Research and Development and Chief Scientific Officer. “Collaborating with leading pharmaceutical researchers will ensure that our enabling technologies are equipped and robust to serve post-genomics drug discovery.”
Advances in high throughput screening, combinatorial chemistry, and genomics have converged to produce a deluge of biochemically active compounds for each of a rapidly increasing number of drug targets. As a result, it is challenging to determine which compound “hits” to take forward, at high cost, into later pharmaceutical discovery. This secondary screening bottleneck could be substantially resolved given reliable, quantitative cell biological information earlier in the drug discovery process. To address this bottleneck in the drug-discovery decision-making process, Cytokinetics is developing Cytometrix™ automated cellular phenotyping technologies that are industrializing cell biology using high technology imaging and informatics approaches.
Cytometrix™ automated cell biological technologies directly and methodically measure, across many experimental conditions, the responses of individual cells to potential drug candidates and compounds of interest and thereby provide key information about both on-target and off-target cellular responses. Cytometrix™ technologies are the first automated and systematic cell biological informatics which reduce lab-to-lab and time-to-time experimental variation. Through microscopic imaging of the cellular morphology of multiple proteins and cellular constituents, Cytometrix™ automated cellular phenotyping technologies profile known drugs, pharmaceutical hits and lead candidates and create unique pan-biological cellular phenotypic multivariate “fingerprints” and detailed reports of biological responses. These “fingerprints” and biological reports are comprehensive, quantitative and reproducible allowing comparisons to facilitate biological insights and to aid in prioritizing potential drug candidates by identifying those compounds with correct on-target effects and fewer off-target effects. Cytometrix™ technologies deliver powerful cellular phenotypic informatics that are used as an intelligent filter in secondary screening alongside biochemical and genetic data to decide which compounds and targets to take forward into later stage discovery prior to costly hit and lead optimization and in vivo studies. Cytometrix™ technologies are complementary to, and yet may impart additional insights beyond, gene and protein expression patterns because they measure, cell-by-cell, the response of a whole network of integrated genes and proteins within their natural environment, the cell.
About Cytokinetics
Founded in 1998 and privately-held, Cytokinetics is dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of a novel class of therapeutics resulting from its leadership position in the emerging field of cytoskeletal pharmacology. The cytoskeleton is a complex, dynamic framework of proteins that is essential for many aspects of cell function including cell division, cell motility, intracellular transport, muscle contractility and regulation of cellular organization. Cytokinetics’ R&D efforts incorporate proprietary CytometrixTM automated cellular phenotyping technologies and are focused on serving pharmaceutical needs in cancer, cardiovascular and infectious diseases. In June 2001, Cytokinetics entered into a major collaboration in oncology with GlaxoSmithKline to research, develop and co-commercialize products that are inhibitors of mitotic kinesin motor proteins. The first drug candidate to be developed under this collaboration is scheduled to enter clinical trials in 2002. For more information, please visit the company’s web site at www.cytokinetics.com.
