Edinburgh Scotland United Kingdom

HUDSON, NY (Marketwire February 3, 2010) Taconic announces today the establishment of a centre specialising in breeding of rodents in Edinburgh. This facility will be used for the development and production of more technologically advanced models available for today’s scientists, at the time that will generate new jobs at the local level. The site is part of the first stage of a strategy of Taconic aimed to establish a strong presence in Scotland. Since 2005, TaconicArtemis GmbH, a subsidiary of Taconic headquartered in Germany, has been working with its Scottish partner CXR Biosciences Ltd (Dundee, Scotland) in the production of innovative, commercially viable, models that are more predictive of effects pharmacokinetic and toxicological drug candidate compounds and their metabolites in the human body. This work has the support of intermediate technology Institute, dedicated to the life sciences (ITI Life Sciences), part of a flagship programme created by Scottish Enterprise for that Scotland can convert their research in world-class commercial successes in life sciences. Based on the success of the program, TaconicArtemis and CXR Biosciences have signed three commercial licenses with ITI Life Sciences that allows them to the joint marketing of a series of models and evaluation services of drugs developed with these new technologies. More than 40 genetically modified strains generated in this program are now included in the program transADMET of companies. Current preclinical models typically do not serve as a good factor of prediction of the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and Toxicology (ADMET) in humans. This inability to translate results in animals to humans is generated by deep differences between species in the levels and functions of proteins involved in ADMET, and is one of the main reasons for the failure of development in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The transADMET program provides a better means preclinical to predict the ADMET response in the human being.