MDS Pharma Services, a leading provider of innovative drug discovery and development solutions, has formed a strategic collaboration with Compendia Bioscience, Inc to deliver a novel solution, OncoPredictor, to improve the development of drugs to treat cancer.

OncoPredictor combines MDS Pharma Services' OncoPanel with Compendia Bioscience's Oncomine for a solution that will help identify cancer patient populations most likely to respond to a new or existing cancer therapy. As a result, research is more efficient and therapies can be targeted to those most likely to benefit.

"MDS Pharma Services is pleased to collaborate with Compendia Bioscience to develop OncoPredictor, a solution that will help clients developing cancer treatments to do so more quickly and effectively," said MDS Pharma Services president David Spaight. "Our pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients seek to determine the efficacy of their compounds across cancer genotypes and patient phenotypes. OncoPredictor will help provide the answer with technology for information-based lead selection, predictive in vivo study design and biomarker development."

OncoPanel offers high-content screening of up to 240 cancer cell lines for sensitivity to specific cancer drugs and drug combinations. Compendia's Oncomine, a database of cancer genomic profiles coupled with a web-enabled analysis application, provides genomic characterization and comparison of cancer cell lines to 2,000 disease signatures from more than 27,000 reference patients based on molecular, pathological and histological sub-types. The OncoPredictor system will analyze drug sensitivity and resistance of novel drugs and drug combinations to identify associations with both disease sub-types and underlying tumour biology.

"Based on our experience working with the top companies pursuing development of cancer treatments, we believe this integrated solution could revolutionize cancer genomics for drug development," said Compendia CEO and co-founder Dan Rhodes. "MDS Pharma Services clearly provides unique experience and capabilities, and we do not believe we could have identified a better partner to co-develop this solution."

MDS Pharma Services is the only contract research organization with firsthand experience of delivering high-quality cellular data on such a large scale using the exact growth and culture conditions from which the genomic data in Oncomine was generated. Clients rely on MDS Pharma Services for this large-scale screening because of its proven experience in developing reliable cell line culture and growth conditions, providing consistent data for the integration of genomic and functional information.

"Compendia Bioscience is a leader in the field of cancer genomics," Spaight added. "Its Oncomine is a standard platform in the industry, and we believe our joint solution - OncoPredictor - will also become a cost-affordable industry standard in oncology drug development for both large and small companies."

MDS Pharma Services Pharmacology/DMPK division offers biochemical, cellular/functional, ADME/DMPK and in vivo assays for use in identifying lead compounds, profiling for selectivity, determining the potential for adverse events, evaluating efficacy and establishing proof of concept.

Oncomine combines a rapidly growing compendium of more than 30,000 expertly curated cancer genomic profiles with a sophisticated analysis engine and a powerful Web application for data mining and visualization.

Compendia Bioscience is dedicated to harnessing the global collection of high-throughput molecular data to provide researchers with the data and analysis tools necessary to validate biomarker and gene target discoveries, better understand mechanisms of disease, and optimize clinical outcomes.

MDS Pharma Services' Oncopanel offers high-throughput cellular drug profiling, relying on deep experience in cell culture and high-content imaging to systematically screen compounds across hundreds of cancer cell lines simultaneously.