Accelerate development of Cancer Immunotherapy (iOnc) drugs with new PathHunter® Checkpoint Assays from DiscoveRx

DiscoveRx Corporation, the leading supplier of innovative cell-based assays and services for drug discovery and development, announced the expansion of its PathHunter cell-based assays portfolio with the release of PathHunter Checkpoint Assays.

The PathHunter Checkpoint Assay portfolio accelerates development of cancer immunotherapies by providing biologically-relevant cell-based assays with a simple, rapid, easy-to-implement protocol and reproducible results, eliminating the inherent variability and time consuming protocols of primary cells, for functional screening of drugs.

“This rapidly expanding portfolio from DiscoveRx for the iOnc market will enable researchers to take advantage of the high reproducibility and ease of use of the PathHunter Checkpoint Assay protocol for a variety of screening applications,” said Dr. Todd Nelson, CEO of DiscoveRx. “With cell-based assays available for targets such as PD-1 and CD40, and a total of twelve new assays for iOnc in 2016, this portfolio provides essential tools that can accelerate discovery and development of novel cancer immunotherapy drugs by greatly reducing assay development time and enabling the rapid identification of functional drug candidates.”

Designed to measure an early event in receptor activation, the PathHunter Checkpoint assays are fast and have exceptional specificity and sensitivity, enabling their use in the discovery and development of both small molecule and biologic drugs. “With PathHunter Checkpoint assays, scientists are now able to get results in less than 5 hours with a simple add and read protocol, shortening their assay time by several days,” according to Theresa Schaub, Sr. VP of Global Marketing for DiscoveRx. “In addition to their target-specific response, the PathHunter assays have demonstrated fifteen times greater sensitivity over reporter gene or cytokine release assays, and thereby, have broad applications in small molecule and biologic drug screening, as well as bioanalytical quality control applications.”

For more information on the PathHunter Checkpoint assays, visit www.discoverx.com/checkpoint and visit us at the Biologics and Biosimilars Congress , February 1 – 2, 2016 in Berlin, Germany at booth number 23.