To reduce time and increase gene discovery productivity

To increase R&D productivity, one possibility is to evaluate and implement novel technologies that could positively affect the efficiency of drug discovery. Cell and animal models have an important role for identifying efficient drugs and detecting adverse effects of compounds. There is a substantial need for physiological cell models and, in particular, for efficacy and safety studies. Primary cells and adult stem cells are now usually used to mimic the specificity of real tissues and replace the conventional immortalized cells in drug screening assays. These cells are refractory to classical transfection methodologies and viral based vector especially derived from lentiviruses is the best method to genetically modify primary and stem cells.

Drug screening in primary and stem cells

Stem cells and primary cells can be genetically modified using reporter gene constructs to improve the throughput of the assays both in vitro and in vivo and provide specific disease models. In addition, these cells are important for understanding differentiation pathways as well as for identifying and validating disease targets using shRNA-library or compound-library screens.

In such strategies, Vectalys provides lentiviral based vectors specially designed and produced to efficiently transduce:

• primary cells like monocytes and dendritic cells, neurons…
• stem cells: adult hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells.

Equally important, the increased predictive power of stably gene-expressing primary and stem cell-based drug and toxicity screenings could contribute to reduce the number of animals that are used for testing purposes by the pharmaceutical industry and institutions.