CYP Design Ltd - Producing human recombinant cytochrome P450 enzymes in human cells: room temperature stable and active microsomal preparations for high throughput drug discovery.

从最初的想法开始，开发一种新药可能需要长达14年的时间，成本接近20亿美元。数以千计的新化学物质作为潜在药物进行了测试，每一种成功地推向市场。早期发现工作试图确定那些具有有益的致病作用的物质，并排除那些有毒的物质。为了防止候选药物不必要地进入昂贵的人体临床试验，新的方法是必要的。动物试验并没有解决毒性问题，因为动物处理化学物质的方式往往截然不同。无论如何，取代动物实验的方法论是非常可取的。人类肝脏中的一组蛋白质，Cyps，主要负责人类处理药物的方式。CYP Design Ltd(CDL)已经开发了生产活性、稳定性和成本效益高的CPPS的方法，目前这些方法是在酵母中生产的。这些产品在药物发现的早期阶段很有用，当时科学家正在寻求决定将一系列新化学物质中的哪一种带入下一阶段的发现过程。更有价值的是在人类细胞中表达人类细胞色素P450，那里的环境将更接近患者体内的环境。使用这些产品的结果也可能被监管机构接受，作为批准新药临床试验之前的直接支持证据。CDL拥有专利技术，这将使其能够开发新的CYP产品，这些产品可以在药物发现过程中使用。

Development of a new drug may take up to 14 years from the initial idea and cost close to $2 Bn. Thousands of new chemicals are tested as potential drugs for every one successfully brought to market. Early discovery work seeks to identify ones with beneficial diseasemodifying properties and to rule out ones that are toxic. New approaches are necessary to prevent drug candidates entering expensive human clinical trials unnecessarily. Animaltesting does not address the problem of toxicity, since animals often deal with chemicals quite differently. In any case, methodolgies that replace animal testing are highly desireable. A set of proteins in the human liver, CYPs, are mostly responsible for how humans deal with drugs. CYPs are available commercially but are expensive, poorly active and inconvenient to use.CYP Design Ltd (CDL) has developed processes for the production of active, stable and costeffective CYPs, which are currently produced in yeast. These products are useful for the early stages of drug discovery, when scientists are seeking to decide which of a set of new chemicals to take to the next stage of the discovery process. Of further value would be human CYPs expressed in human cells, where the environment would be closer still to that in thepatient. Results using these products may also be acceptable to the Regulatory Agencies as direct supporting evidience prior to the approval of a clinical trial with a new prospective medicine. CDL has proprietary technology that will allow it to develop new CYP products that can be used throughout the drug discovery process.