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Market: LSE
Sector: Pharmaceuticals
EPIC: ATD
Latest Price: 1.38  (0,00%)
52-week High: 13.50
52-week Low: 1.25
Market Cap: 1.63M
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Asterand
www.asterand.com

Asterand plc is the leading global supplier of high quality, well characterized human tissue and human tissue-based research services to drug discovery scientists. Their mission is to provide human tissues and services to accelerate the identification and validation of drug targets and enhance the selection of drug candidates with an increased likelihood of clinical success.

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Asterand’s shares up almost 10 per cent after “research milestone” achieved

30th Nov 2011, 10:49 am by Jon Mainwaring

Shares in human tissue specialist Asterand (LON:ATD) were up 9.5 per cent at 2.6 pence each during late morning trading today after it said its BioSeek subsidiary had achieved a “research milestone” in its drug discovery collaboration with Japanese life sciences firm Ono Pharmaceutical.

BioSeek is applying its BioMAP platform to perform a number of tasks on a drug discovery target selected by Ono. These tasks include phenotypic screening, hit identification, lead optimisation and clinical candidate selection.

Under the three-year agreement with Ono, BioSeek is receiving research funding and is eligible to receive success payments based on the research-phase progress of this collaboration and further milestone payments based on the clinical development-phase progress of a drug candidate discovered under this collaboration. Ono will have worldwide rights to develop and sell all pharmaceutical products discovered through the collaboration.

“We highly value our relationship with Ono since it enables us to take full advantage of BioMAP’s power to discover and develop innovative new drug candidates,” said Jack Davis, Asterand's chairman and chief executive officer. “We are looking forward to the successful continuation and further achievements of the collaboration.”

Asterand is a supplier of high-quality human tissue and tissue-based services. It says it takes a “comprehensive approach” to human tissue and associated research services, which means that pharmaceutical, biotech and diagnostic companies gain a “unique opportunity” to have one company meet all of their human biomaterial needs.

Asterand’s BioMAP systems are primary cell-based models of human disease biology, designed to replicate the intricate cell and pathway interactions as they are observed in human pharmacology and toxicology.

According to the company, drug compounds induce specific patterns of changes in these systems that can be compared to a large number of reference profiles in the BioMAP database. So, says Asterand, assessment using BioMAP can provide early insight into human pharmacological and toxicological properties of compounds.

Asterand, which began a formal sale process for the entire company in late October, reported in an interim management statement earlier this month that trading conditions had improved recently and that it expects tissue revenues to be in line with last year. It also said that the BioSeek business had consolidated its trading during the second half after achieving strong growth during H1 2011.

Overall, the firm expects group revenues for 2011 to exceed the US$21.3 million it achieved last year.


 

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