News

April 5, 2005 - Cyprotex Launches Innovative New Screening Service

Cyprotex today announces the launch of its new innovative screening service, Cloe Screen® HERG Safety, for the early and rapid assessment of cardiovascular toxicity.

Cyprotex's Cloe Screen® HERG Safety is the first automated electrophysiology high throughput service that provides direct evaluation of ion channels, quantifies dose-response and delivers data on the degree of HERG inhibition and potential cardiac toxicity potency. With Cloe Screen® HERG Safety Assay these important results are now both consistently accurate and reproducible.

Commenting on the launch of this new service, Robert Atwater, Chairman and CEO of Cyprotex said: "The Cloe Screen® HERG Safety assay provides a new high throughput approach providing unrivalled efficiency for our partners. This technology delivers a 50 fold increase in efficiency over the gold standard single cell patch clamp method, without compromising data integrity - and this changes the entire economics of HERG toxicity screening. This exciting new technology ensures the identification of issues earlier in the drug discovery process before significant and unnecessary costs and time are invested in further drug development."

Some drugs or late-stage development drug candidates are found to produce life-threatening toxicity, associated with a delay in cardiac repolarisation and triggering a prolongation of the QT interval. This prolongation sets the heart into arrhythmia and can cause fatal cardiac arrest. These toxic effects are caused by the inhibition of the cell membrane transport system known as the HERG channel and the consequence of results showing these effects is often the costly withdrawal of the drug or termination of late stage drug development.

The Cloe Screen® HERG Safety assay provides an exceptional fit with the Company's unique portfolio of in vitro assays valuable in evaluating the ADME and physiochemical properties of compounds. The Cloe Screen® assays are widely accepted throughout the industry as providing essential support to partners in improving and selecting their drug compounds and fulfilling the need for reliable information on potential toxicity of early drug discovery.

For further information:

Cyprotex PLC
De Karen Jones, Business Development
Tel: +44 1625 505 100
k.jones@cyprotex.com
www.cyprotex.com

Media Enquires:

Claire Elbrow
Pope Woodhead & Associates Ltd
Tel: +44 1480 300300
claire.elbrow@popewoodheadpr.com
www.popewoodheadpr.com