Oxagen Limited has announced a collaborative research agreement with Pfizer to investigate the association of certain Pfizer-nominated genes with asthma.

The goal of the collaboration is to validate whether the candidate genes influence susceptibility to asthma. Oxagen will perform SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) identification and genotyping of genes nominated by Pfizer within Oxagen's extensive set of asthma samples with the aim of identifying SNPs associated with respiratory disease.

Asthma and other respiratory diseases are common, complex diseases influenced by genetic susceptibility, chance and environmental influences. Genetics, particularly the study of the differences within populations using SNP analysis, has the potential to highlight a number of biological mechanisms implicated in disease and could lead to the discovery of numerous points of therapeutic intervention applicable to different forms of that disease.

Trevor Nicholls, Chief Executive Officer of Oxagen, commented: "We are delighted to announce this collaboration with Pfizer. Our clinical asthma samples have been carefully selected and phenotyped and are therefore capable of delivering the sensitivity and power that is critical to studies such as this."