Business First picked up the news that PGXL Technologies is adding the DEPArray. It’s a nice little backgrounder aimed at a general, rather than scientific, audience. Read it here.
To delve deeper into the science of circulating tumor cell detection and isolation, try this.
Silicon Bio’s website is here.
HealthDay marks the tenth anniversary of the mapping of the human genome with a State of Genomic Medicine piece that contains the following:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now includes genetic information on labeling for more than 100 drugs.
Construction has started on another expansion of PGXL. We’re tripling lab space, including the addition of a full molecular lab. We’ll have details in a few weeks.
The Director of Digital for pharmaceutical group Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, John Pugh, thinks there’s a future for gaming in drug development and treatment.
What really sparked my interest in the potential of gaming is that a lot of what we do in pharma is around educating and teaching people; whether that’s teaching doctors about specific products, educating the general public and patients about diseases and healthy ways to live, or teaching people how to take their medication. Gaming seems to be a useful way and effective way for us to do that.
Boehringer’s first game, Syrum, is available in Beta on Facebook with the tagline, “The fate of the world is in your hands.” And you can save the world from horrifying pandemic by applying techniques of drug development. The game is designed to be fun, but in the process teaches valuable lessons. This from Tracy Staton in FiercePharma:
It was education that drew Pugh and his team into the project; as he points out for PSFK, the industry does a lot of it, whether that’s “educating” doctors about products, or teaching patients how to take their meds properly. Just because the game isn’t designed as an educational platform doesn’t mean it can’t educate, in a stealthy, backhanded way.
The industry will be watching. If the techniques and technologies can become the spoon full of sugar (that helps the medicine go down), expect a lot more of this in the future.
According to a report published by Thomson Reuters (‘the leading source of intelligent information for professionals”) and excerpted here, the use of Personalized Medicine technology in drug development moderates R&D costs and timelines:
Relying on the Boston Consulting Group, the Report notes that nearly $300 million can be saved by pharmaceutical companies by incorporating personalized medicine technologies into their R & D process. As an example, a major pharmaceutical company was reported to save approximately $9.5 million by incorporating predictive genomic markers into a redesigned $10 million clinical trial.
According to the report, more than 50 drugs currently in development use genetic markers, and 90% of pharmaceutical companies use genomic targets in their drug discovery programs.
For what it’s worth, PGXL has enjoyed a significant up-tick in drug-related contract research drawing on the lab’s pharmacogentic testing and assay development capabilities.
The Thomson Reuters report can be downloaded here.
To make DNA collection easier and less intrusive, PGXL researched and implemented the collection of saliva as a specimen.
While there’s nothing unusual about the use of saliva in DNA testing, the details of collection, transcontinental shipping, and processing into pharmacogenetic data turned out to be kind of tricky — particularly for a lab like PGXL, which is focused on increasing the value of its testing by decreasing both turnaround time and the number of collections that need to be repeated.
Our researchers came up with some good stuff, and Dr. Deanne Pierce presented the results to the Association for Molecular Pathology’s personalized medicine conference. Her ”Successful long-range PCR from saliva DNA after removal of PCR inhibitors” documented PGXL’s research.
Dr. Pierce also presented a second poster: “An A to G mutation creates an MspI restriction site in the S (short) allele of the 5-HTT (SLC6A4) promoter region.”
Forgive our self-indulgence, but along with today’s announcement of our new marketing co-venture — PGXL Partners — we thought we’d also show off our new look and feel. This is our new identity brochure. All our new marketing materials are going to follow in the same style.
We think it’s pretty cool.
