Agilent and Molecular Discovery sign co-marketing agreement
Will combine hardware and software to speed up metabolite identification and analysis
US-headquartered measurement company Agilent Technologies has signed a co-marketing agreement with Molecular Discovery in Italy to provide biopharmaceutical researchers with an advanced metabolite-identification platform.
Under the agreement the firms will market Agilent’s high-resolution liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) technology and Molecular Discovery’s Mass-MetaSite software to enable superior identification and analysis of complex biological mixtures.
Gus Salem, Agilent’s Biological Systems Division’s vp and general manager, says that up to now, the challenges of identifying and predicting human drug metabolism have been major obstacles in the development of safe, effective drug candidates and the two firms are working to solve this problem.
‘Whereas traditional metabolite identification, synthesis and toxicity testing has been costly and time consuming for researchers, our combined industry-leading technologies will now give them faster, more accurate data, and the confidence they need to ensure the safety of their products much earlier in the preclinical phase of development,’ he said.
Gabriele Cruciani, Molecular Discovery’s md, added: ‘Agilent’s leading LC/MS platform is enabling companies to obtain high-quality analytical data with a much higher throughput than before. This means that the experts now need to interpret even more data. Working with Agilent, we are seamlessly combining these high-throughput hardware capabilities with Molecular Discovery’s high-throughput software capabilities, providing a revolutionary advanced metabolite identification platform.’
Metabolites are the small molecules that are the products of life in the cells of every type of plant or animal. Scientists study snapshots of all the metabolites in a given bio-sample in their search for new therapeutics and to understand the mechanisms of disease and health.
Agilent provides sophisticated LC/MS technology for advances in this area.
