To mark its 10th anniversary, Drug Discovery & Development magazine invited industry vendors to reflect on the history and made predictions about future of the industry. Featured here are verbatim comments from this company.
Affymetrix Inc.
Headquarters
Santa Clara, Calif.
Location(s)
California, Ohio, UK, Singapore
Years in Drug Research
13 Years
Spokesperson
Jay Kaufman, Vice President, Product Marketing
Web site
About the company
Affymetrix’ mission is to revolutionize how the world benefits from genetic information. Our gene expression product line has been used to build toxicology databases for scientists worldwide, primarily using our rat gene expression array. Our DMET solution offers the most comprehensive single assay for looking at markers associated with drug metabolism in the context of drug development and we continue to evolve that product offering. Our cytogenetics solution allows scientists to detect chromosomal abnormalities in childhood developmental disorders with the goal of improving treatment options and increasing diagnostic potential.
The company’s line of business as it was 10 years ago. Changes in life science/drug research that influenced business.
Ten years ago we pioneered array-based gene expression profiling. It was this early success and innovation that allowed us to become established with pharma companies. One of the key changes is that drug developers today look at a variety of data types and often combine data from different scientific applications. For example, they want to look at a candidate drug’s impact on gene function and structure and combine such information with proteomic and metabolic data. The incorporation of genomic data into drug development and FDA submissions will continue to expand.
Scientific challenges in the next 10 years.
A big challenge will be the continued adoption of microarrays as tools for routine testing in disease diagnosis and the FDA’s acceptance of such approaches. This has implications for the kind of products we want to develop and offer. There will be ongoing interest in microfluidics and other miniaturizing technologies to try to drive costs down. We are also closely watching the progress towards truly personalized medicine in clinical settings. Lastly, the cost of sequencing continues to decrease and this opens up many possibilities for that technology in research, drug development and clinical settings.
Factor(s) that drove the development of technologies during the last 10 years and greatest area of growths.
Consolidation and cost control on the part of pharmaceutical companies have led to a desire for lower-cost techniques. Demand for our products has been boosted by further acceptance of microarray data as being reproducible, reliable and useful. We’ve seen more orders due to the proliferation of microarray technology in multiple applications in human and non-human work. We have also seen a lot of opportunities grow from pharma’s adoption of genomic techniques in discovery and development and their diversification beyond traditional compound screening strategies.
Bold Prediction: Where will drug research technology be in 10 years?
This year the Marshfield Clinic used Affymetrix’ DMET solution to discover a genetic variation associated with an individual's response to the drug Warfarin, and the label has now been updated to include genomic markers for improved dosing and safety. We believe we will see more technologies that allow drug companies to tailor therapies for specific patients based on genetic profiles as well as clinical phenotypes. We also think there will be alternatives to traditional animal model tox/efficacy testing. In addition there will be more reliance on databases of gene signatures, the use of relevant biomarkers, patient stratification and safety profiles.
