Maccine partners on preclinical imaging lab in Singapore

28-Feb-2011 - Last updated on 28-Feb-2011 at 11:31 GMT

Contract research organisation (CRO) Maccine will set up a preclinical imaging laboratory in partnership with the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC) under a deal announced late last week.

The ‘Translational Imaging Industrial Lab’ (TIIL) will provide imaging services for small and large animals with tech ranging from micro positron emission tomography to computed tomography and dual emission X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA).

The unit will also offer bespoke imaging protocol development services that can be tailored to the pharmaceutical firm’s specific project needs.

The ability to develop imaging protocol’s is somewhat lacking in the wider CRO sector according to Maccine, which claimed that at present only four or five companies worldwide offer this type of service for preclinical development.

Maccine’s partnership with the SBIC, which is part of the Government Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), follows just months after the Singaporean CRO opened a non-human primate (NHP) imaging centre in the country.

Now, as then, Maccine cited the pharmaceutical industry’s desire to increase the efficiency of research spending and reduce attrition rates in mid to late stage clinical trials as the key motivation for the investment.

CEO Leigh Berryman said the lab “Will allow early establishment of imaging methodologies in the drug development process [which] presents the exciting possibility of projecting the efficiencies offered by this technology straight into the clinic.”

This was echoed by SBIC executive director Philip Kuchel who said: “Imaging now occupies a vital place in the industrial drug development process but it is a constantly evolving field.

“This tie-up will allow the latest R&D advances achieved through the laboratories of SBIC to be applied directly to practical questions in drug discovery and development”