FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SMARTCymru award for AssayMetrics
28th January 2005 --
AssayMetrics is pleased to announce support from the Welsh Development Agency in the shape of a SMARTCymru award for the development of new fluorescence lifetime assays.
Pierre Graves, President of AssayMetrics said, "Our software simulations showed that lifetime technologies should dramatically improve the way new drugs are discovered. WDA assistance will help us turn these ideas into new products for drug screening and diagnostics."
Today, biochemists in pharma companies like to use tag molecules that emit light rather than radioactivity. Unfortunately they are much more likely to give misleading results than the old radioactive ones. This means that effective compounds could be missed and time can be wasted on compounds that are not truly effective. Lifetime methods make it much easier to identify light from the tag molecules rather than interferences.
Questioned about the areas of application, Pierre Graves said, "Most if not all of the important drug targets should be amenable to our lifetime technologies. We see the important applications as kinases, receptors, proteases and molecules that report on the activity of drug targets."
AssayMetrics is a start-up company, founded in September 2004 to exploit a set of new drug discovery technologies developed in South Wales. The AssayMetrics team consists of former employees of Amersham plc (now GE Healthcare) who invented the technologies and Pierre Graves, who left GE to set up the new company.
For More Information Contact:
AssayMetrics Limited
22 Angelica Way
Cardiff CF14 9FJ
Tel. 05511
400 731
e-mail: sales@assaymetrics.com