Servier to accelerate drug development with microdosing

French drug company Servier has entered into a collaboration agreement with bioanalytical firm Xceleron to use its microdosing early testing techniques.

The agreement will allow Servier to use Xceleron’s accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) systems to give the company the ability to conduct human testing at a much earlier than conventional phase I studies. The “phase 0” testing scheme will be used in drug candidate selection.

The firms claimed that the agreement is the first of its kind within the drug industry. Xceleron claims that human microdosing allows pharmaceuticals to reduce the number of failures in phase I trials by exposing the drug early to humans rather than just animals.

Dr Bernard Marchand of Servier said that the company was delighted with the agreement: “Our positive experience as one of the supporters of the CREAM trial has enabled us to see the potential utility of AMS in improving our drug selection procedures.”

Xceleron’s CEO professor Colin Garner commented that the agreement “shows the far-sightedness of Servier in introducing novel enabling technologies to change their paradigm of drug development”.

Servier has recently filed registration for treatments for cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and depression.

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