Icagen, a drug discovery services and products provider, has announced an agreement with Japan-based drug discovery sales specialist On Target Co., Ltd, granting the right to broker Icagen's products and services in the important territory. The agreement is expected to facilitate the ability of Japanese researchers to access Icagen's expansive portfolio of drug discovery offerings, including Icagen's rich historic expertise in ion channel services and cell lines, transporter investigation and assay services, high throughput screening, computational chemistry, and management of integrated drug discovery Target-to-Lead projects.

"Icagen looks forward to bringing our unique products and services to the Japanese market." said Chief Commercial Officer Chris Mathes, Ph.D., regarding this announcement. "Both Icagen and On Target bring decades of experience to this new collaboration. We strongly believe that Japan's drug discovery research community will greatly benefit from our alliance."

In July 2016, Icagen acquired a comprehensive early discovery unit located in Tucson, AZ. Acquisition of this facility and its scientists transformed Icagen overnight from a specialized contract research organization (CRO) to a full-fledged early drug discovery partner, poised to collaborate with the pharmaceutical industry providing the ability to create better novel drug candidate leads, faster.

"On Target had previously recognized Icagen as a scientific leader in ion channel drug discovery with products and services of great interest to researchers in Japan," said Keiichi Yokoyama, Ph.D., Commercial Operations Director at On Target, "For this alone, we were eager to collaborate with Icagen. Acquisition of the Tucson facility which expanded their ability to now address many more drug targets adds even more to our excitement."  

Icagen partners with global pharmaceutical and biotech companies to generate high-quality, advanced leads. As a focused, target-to-lead company, Icagen works with collaborators in multi-year, integrated drug discovery programs as well as piecemeal projects to fill-in the gaps of R&D efforts. Born from a biotech background and matured by pharma companies, Icagen brings to partners a North American team with over 20 years of experience in early discovery. The process of drug discovery starts with druggable targets. Icagen scientists have vast experience in target-based drug discovery, including ion channels, kinases, GPCR's and transporters. The Icagen team works with collaborators to determine target feasibility using state-of-the-art computational chemistry methods. Once a target is selected the team combines virtual screening, ultra-high throughput screening (uHTS), biology and medicinal chemistry to generate viable leads in an iterative process.