The company said the new service offerings include ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion) and toxicity studies, as well as preclinical and clinical chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) development services.
30 per cent of new drugs fail in the development pipeline due to toxicity profiles and side effects, the company estimates, and by evaluating a molecule's ADME properties and potential toxicity, ADME-Tox screening assays help to optimise the number of drug candidates for further development.
"Our goal is to save our customers both time and money," said John Daniels, vice president of Celsis Analytical Services.
"With our expanded services, we offer customers a continuum of technical expertise from pre-clinical testing through market launch."
The European ADME-Tox technology market was estimated at $384m (€277m) in 2005 and tipped to reach $775m by 2011, with nearly three quarters of overall revenues generated by ADME-Tox services, the largest market segment in Europe.
Celsis has spotted the opportunity in this booming market and has expanded its service offerings, invested in instrumentation and upgraded its quality platform to GLP (good laboratory practice) and GMP (good manufacturing practice) levels.
These upgrades will be part of the company's newly formed Development Services group, an extension of its Analytical Services division, which will be located at the company's Baltimore, Maryland site.
The ADME-Tox services will focus on in vitro drug metabolism, drug-drug interactions, permeability, absorption, organ toxicity, and plasma protein binding.
Celsis gained its ADME-Tox service capabilities through the acquisition of InVitro Technologies which was completed in June last year in a deal worth $35m.
The company recently said an "accelerated payment" of $2.2m in June 2007 helped improved the firm's debt situation following the buyout and reduced its bank loan to $7.5m. InVitro had a turnover of $11.6m in 2005, 20 per cent more than the previous year, of which around 20 per cent were generated through services revenue.
In addition, Celsis will offer CMC drug development services to serve clients from discovery through all clinical phases of drug development.
CMC services will include preformulation and formulation development to provide comprehensive insight into the physicochemical properties of a drug molecule and its product formulations.