Business
Funding and Partnership Agree
Funding and Partnership Agree.
About this update from Valirx Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n RNS Number : 2570I ValiRx PLC 09 March 2010 \n \n\nValiRx Plc\n \n(\"ValiRx\" or the \"Company\")\n \nValiRx announces funding and partnership agreement\n \nValiRx is pleased to announce that is has entered into a funding and commercial partnership agreement with the Laboratory of Government Chemistry and Horizon Discovery. This partnership provides funding for the development of ValiRx's Hypergenomics technology into new gene activity based diagnostics and screening products. The partners are the end users of such tests and potential long term customers; this provides further product distribution networks for the technology. ValiRx has now completed a pilot development study and the goal of the agreement is to formulate new commercial products in the service and testing arena.\n \nThe market potential is considerable for a method that offers whole genome screening. The cancer diagnostics market is predicted to be around $6Bn in 2010 with the global epigenetic market estimated to be $1.7Bn and growing 60% by 2012. \n \nValiRx has worldwide exclusive rights for the Hypergenomics technology and will retain the commercialisation rights for future products that arise under this agreement. Successful tests should enable a variety of products centered on epigenetic mapping to be produced and ValiRx will develop service and product offerings focused on cancer and stem cell diagnostics and monitoring. The principal applications will be the selection of optimal therapy regimes for patients in order to achieve the best medicinal outcomes. This is a key issue for pharmaceutical companies when conducting clinical trials and for follow on studies for companion diagnostics for approved drugs. Development of companion diagnostics is increasingly essential for the registration of new therapeutic products providing a much needed boost to pharma revenues.\n \nEpigenetics, the science behind the Hypergenomics technology, involves the understanding and measurement of changes in gene activity. This is one of the fastest growing areas of life sciences and has wide ranging applications involving cancer and stem cells leading to pharmaceutical development and regenerative medicine. The current tests being developed by ValiRx are focused on cancer diagnostics and stem cell monitoring.\n \nThe pharmaceutical in...