The firm said it will use its anti-cancer cell proliferation panel, cellular cytokine/chemokine release assays, or in vivo efficacy models, to help identify promising, and eliminate antagonistic, responses to new mixtures of drugs, before they reach the clinical trial stage.
Such studies are also aimed at demonstrating whether new combinations of drugs can improve the efficacy of existing treatments, and also ensure that they will not decrease the effectiveness of standard therapies and expose any clinical trial subjects to potential harm, said Caliper.
A combination drug is comprised of two or more regulated active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that are mixed and produced as a single entity. They are already relatively common for the treatment of bacterial infections, HIV, hypertension and cancer, which are all diseases that normally require patients to take a lot of different medications.
However, such products are gaining a wider popularity across these and a range of other disease areas, as they can be more efficient than taking multiple numbers of standard drugs, particularly in terms of dosing; have the potential to extend the lifecycle of existing drugs for manufacturers; and, in some cases, can improve patient compliance.
As a result, market demand for combination products is booming - and according to recent research, account for an estimated 30 per cent of new products under development.
