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Life Sciences Celsis heats up fight against Hepatitis
Life Sciences Celsis heats up fight against Hepatitis | Celsis heats up fight against Hepatitis |
| Written by Sam Fountain | |
| Thursday, 27 March 2008 | |
 Rapid laboratory analysis group, Celsis has announced an agreement with US-based pharmaceutical discovery company, Apath to evaluate drug candidates to combat the Hep C virus.
The Newmarket-based firm said that its Celsis In Vitro Technologies (IVT) division, which it acquired back in July 2006, has signed an exclusive global market development agreement with Apath LLC to assist customers in the evaluation of drug candidates for their cytotoxicity and efficacy against Hepatitis C. Celsis said that its IVT division, which provides in vitro liver cell products and development services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries aimed at reducing the time and cost of drug discovery and development, signed the agreement based on its IP portfolio relating to Hep C. "This market development agreement with Apath LLC is another significant step for our Celsis IVT business and demonstrates the substantive progress that Celsis is delivering to this field," said CEO of Celsis, Jay LeCoque. "We are pleased to partner with Apath who have assembled a leading intellectual property portfolio in supporting the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in their quest to find solutions to treat or prevent Hepatitis C." Research into potential therapeutics for the virus, which affects an estimated 200m people worldwide, have been hindered in part by the absence of effective in vitro efficacy models in which potential compounds can be evaluated, Celsis said. It said that there are over 100 pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies who have active Hep C programmes, and this agreement provides these companies with access to a cell-based screening programme of their candidate compounds by leveraging Celsis IVT's market presence and in vitro development capabilities with Apath's proprietary technology platforms against the virus' life cycle. Commercial launch of this programme is expected to take place in the second quarter of this year, and Celsis said that there is the potential for sizeable incremental revenues to Celsis IVT over the next several years, but the company did not provide specific figures. Celsis also announced that the overall group is on track to announce revenue and profit growth in line with its board's expectations for the financial year. In a trading update, the company said it had made good progress during the year, with particularly strong trading in the fourth quarter. "We have seen a continued strengthening of performance, particularly from the Rapid Detection and In Vitro Technologies divisions, and we believe that Celsis is well placed for future growth, both organically and through acquisition opportunities, which we continue to review," said LeCoque. Full year results are expected on June 18.
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