Genaissance Pharmaceuticals Signs Two Agreements With the United States Department of Agriculture -
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: GNSC - News) announced today that it has signed a cooperative agreement with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the in-house research arm of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). In cooperation with scientists at ARS, Genaissance will determine the distribution of known bovine SNPs in different types of beef and dairy cattle and will construct and validate assays for these SNPs. ARS will then make this new panel of assays available to trace the origin and/or parentage of cattle.
Genaissance also announced that the Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS), an agency of the USDA, which has responsibility for protecting and promoting U.S. agricultural health, had awarded Genaissance a contract to conduct genotyping services to determine the susceptibility of sheep to scrapie as part of the National Scrapie Eradication Program. Genaissance's scrapie genotyping assays were developed in collaboration with scientists at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, part of ARS.
Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system of sheep and goats. There is no scientific evidence to indicate that scrapie poses a risk to human health but the disease has serious economic consequences for sheep producers whose flocks become infected with the disease. Scientists have identified forms of a sheep gene, which determine a sheep's susceptibility to being infected with scrapie. Thus, there is potential economic value in using the information from genotyping to breed sheep that have greater resistance to the disease.
"Our work with the USDA is helping us to open up a new market, Ag genotyping," said Gerald F. Vovis, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Genaissance. "These two agreements, coupled with the new bovine tests that we recently introduced, provide Genaissance with additional services that we can offer not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. With our growing experience and our European facility, we believe that we have the credibility and physical presence we need to enter the European animal genotyping market."
Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is developing innovative products based on its proprietary pharmacogenomic technology and has a revenue-generating business in DNA and pharmacogenomic products and services. The Company's product development strategy is focused on in-licensing drug candidates with promising clinical profiles and finding genetic markers to identify a responsive patient population. This strategy enables Genaissance to leverage existing clinical data and, thus, reduce the costs and risks associated with traditional drug development and increase the probability of clinical success and commercialization. Genaissance intends to use this strategy to build a late-stage, proprietary candidate drug pipeline. The Company's lead product, vilazodone for depression, is in Phase II of development. Genaissance also markets its proprietary FAMILION(TM) Test, designed to detect mutations responsible for causing Familial Long QT and Brugada Syndromes, two causes of sudden cardiac death. For more information on Genaissance, visit our website at: genaissance.com. |
