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Alacris, GSK Ink Cancer Drug Stratification Deal

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – German firm Alacris Theranostics today announced a deal with GlaxoSmithKline for the application of Alacris' Modcell System for drug stratification.

The technology, which was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics and is licensed exclusively to Alacris, will be used by GSK for early stage cancer drug discovery. GSK will provide Alacris with preclinical biology data from a cancer drug discovery project. Alacris will apply its systems biology model to determine the in silico effect of the inhibitor in its "virtual clinical trial," and then suggest cancer cell lines, as well as cancers, that may be likely responders to the inhibitor.

The process will be based on whole-genome and transcriptome data integrated in Alacris' cancer model ModCell.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Based in Berlin, Alacris develops personalized medicine approaches directed at cancer. Its ModCell approach is based on next-generation sequencing and kinetic pathway information, as well as mutation and drug databases.

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