Tandem Labs
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, September 13/ PRNewswire/ -- Tandem Labs, a leading contract research organization (CRO) providing bioanalytical and immunoanalytical testing for the pharmaceutical industry, and PharmaKD, a Boston, Massachusetts-based division of Linden Technologies providing mass spectrometry-based pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) for drug metabolite and biomarker profiling, announced today, September 13, 2006, that Tandem Labs has acquired PharmaKD. Under the agreement, Tandem Labs will retain key personnel, intellectual property portfolios, proprietary informatics, scientific instruments, and 7,000-square-feet of operational space from PharmaKD.
Tandem Labs will operate three facilities within the United States: Tandem Labs-Utah, Tandem Labs-New Jersey, and the new Tandem Labs-New England, formerly known as PharmaKD. Tandem's expanded services will include metabolite profiling, identification, and quantitation; biomarker discovery and screening; protein-binding assays; and discovery bioanalytical support services.
With the acquisition, Tandem Labs will obtain proprietary informatics that can drastically reduce the difficulty, complexity, and time-consuming nature of developing and launching a drug to market. DMDiscovery&trade is an innovative drug metabolism technology that increases the productivity of drug metabolite identification and quantitation. MarkerScan&trade is a biomarker discovery and screening process that efficiently and effectively identifies potential biomarkers that can be used to increase the understanding of disease, diagnosis, and predictive models as well as drug compound safety, efficacy, and side-effect profiles.
"As the costs increase yearly for developing and launching a new drug, we at Tandem Labs have vigorously investigated new technologies and services that will allow our clients to safely and cost-effectively bring new medicines to market," explains Dr. Denis Lin, president and CEO of Tandem Labs. "PharmaKD has strong intellectual property portfolios that improve pharmaceutical research productivity, reduce costs, and increase the success rate of drug candidates. These portfolios coupled with Tandem's long-standing, client-centric, and innovative bioanalytical services will provide our clients with a more complete laboratory menu and a higher likelihood of success when investigating new chemical entities."
Adds Dr. Lily Li, president of PharmaKD and the newly appointed Laboratory Director of Tandem Labs-New England, "We are extremely pleased to merge with an innovative and growing company such as Tandem Labs. We believe Tandem Labs has the services, customer focus, and dedicated sales force needed for future expansion in the competitive pharmaceutical-support industry." Dr. Li joins Tandem Labs with significant expertise in biomarker discovery, high throughput protein binding assays, metabolite profiling and identification, pharmacokinetics, and antibody-based biotherapeutic assays. Prior to PharmaKD, Dr. Li was the director of Mass Spectrometry Analytics for Cantata Pharmaceuticals and the lead of High Throughput Analytics for Cereon Genomics/Monsanto, among others. Dr. Li earned her Ph.D. in lipid chemistry from Cornell University.
Tandem Labs is a privately held company with a 25-year history of applying scientific knowledge and technology to solutions in the life sciences. Since 1992, Tandem Labs has applied mass spectrometry and more recently immunoanalytical expertise in support of new drug development for the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries. This specialization has resulted in the emergence of Tandem Labs as a leading bioanalytical CRO.
Tandem Labs offers rapid method development of LC/MS/MS and GC/MS/MS assays to support clinical and pre-clinical studies adhering to Good Laboratory Practices (GLP). Tandem Labs' discovery team specializes in rapid development, abbreviated validations, and high-throughput analysis of non-GLP samples. Tandem Labs' Biomarker and Immunoanalytical Division provides method development, validation, and sample analysis for novel and esoteric biomarkers as well as the analysis of biotherapeutics and antibodies.
Founded in July 2004, PharmaKD has state-of-the-art laboratories in the heart of the Boston-area biotechnology community. PharmaKD provides proprietary mass spectrometry-based platforms for automated drug metabolite profiling (DMDiscovery&trade) and biomarker discovery (MarkerScan&trade), as well as high throughput drug-protein binding (HT PB) assays. These technologies are used for predicting drug efficacy, drug toxicity, and monitoring disease progression.
Founded in May 2000 by Dr. Tai-Nang Huang, Linden Technologies, Inc. is a 20,000-square-foot laboratory located in Woburn, Massachusetts. Linden's staff includes scientists with a broad range of expertise in molecular biology, cell biology, medicinal chemistry, engineering, bioinformatics, computational biology, and pharmaceutical development.
CONTACTS:
Denis Lin , Ph.D., President & CEO, (801) 293-2400, e-mail: denis.lin@tandemlabs.com
Jean Pineault , M.S., Vice President, Sales & Marketing, (609) 228-0201, e-mail: jean.pineault@tandemlabs.com
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