VIA Pharmaceuticals a biotechnology company focused on the development of compounds for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, has announced funding of a research initiative for a pharmacogenomics sub-study in its VIA-2291 Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) trial. This study will be funded by Genome Quebec, a non-profit organization focused on genomics and proteomics research.

VIA joined the Montreal Heart Institute in the "Competition Privac" organized by Genome Quebec to promote academic and private industry collaboration in genomics and proteomics. Funding of the programme will be approximately $5.0 million at current US and Canadian exchange rates, with VIA providing approximately $2.4 million of this funding for expenditures planned in its ACS clinical trial, and approximately $200,000 for costs related to the pharmacogenomics sub-study. Genome Quebec and other companies will be providing the balance of the co-funding.

The primary focus of the project will be to develop a 5 Lipoxygenase (5-LO) genotyping panel for VIA-2291 as well as a next-generation all-inclusive ADME/Tox panel. Additionally, the project includes development of genotyping panels broadly applicable to future clinical trials, thus creating informatics tools for genotyping operations in support of VIA's pharmacogenomic sub-study, and providing the ability to integrate these tools in VIA's current, and future, clinical trials.

"We believe that this sub-study will generate important information on the pharmacogenomics of our study patients, and will provide additional insight into the role we believe VIA-2291 will play in reducing vascular inflammation in ACS patients with atherosclerosis", stated Lawrence K Cohen, VIA's CEO and president. Dr Cohen further stated "we believe that this collaboration with Montreal Heart Institute, including Dr Jean-Claude Tardif, its director of research and the principal investigator for our ACS phase II trial, and genomics thought leaders at Genome Quebec, will provide state-of-the-art tools that will have broad benefits for VIA in current and future clinical trials".