Axol Bioscience and Metrion Biosciences announce new collaboration

Axol Bioscience has announced a new partnership with Metrion Biosciences, a specialist ion channel drug discovery business.

Their work together will aim to improve, standardise and more accurately predict the risk of human clinical pro-arrhythmias, in accordance with the US Food and Drug Administration's Comprehensive In Vitro Proarrhythmia Assay initiative.

Metrion will make use of Axol's human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes to carry out ion channel screening, cardiac safety testing and translational phenotypic assays for this research.

It is hoped that by combining Metrion's contract research services and assay development capabilities with Axol's human iPSC-derived cells and culture reagents, the partners will have a source of well-validated stem cell-derived assays and services for use in predictive toxicology and drug discovery screening.

Dr Yichen Shi, chief executive officer of Axol Bioscience, said: "We value the insight and expertise Metrion's team bring to this partnership. Working together, we can be sure that our customers continue to get the most out of our products and services."

The work will support both companies' efforts to enhance cardiac safety testing standards.