ValiRx incorporates new wholly-owned lab subsidiary

Life science company ValiRx announced the incorporation of a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Inaphaea BioLabs, on Wednesday.

The AIM-traded company said Inaphaea would be based in its laboratory in MediCity Nottingham, and would offer pre-clinical and drug discovery testing services to academic, biotech, and pharmaceutical researchers.

Inaphaea would be the foundational module of ValiRx's ‘translational contract research organisation’ (tCRO’).

A significant portion of the testing for ValiRx's evaluation pipeline, currently outsourced to external CROs, would be transferred into Inaphaea.

The company said the subsidiary would have the capability to conduct in-vitro and ex-vivo testing for all in-house pipeline and evaluation projects, as well as offer services to external users.

It said the services would focus on the application of both standard and specialised cell-based technologies to generate a deep biological understanding of drug candidates across preclinical phases of the drug development process.

The laboratory was targeted to be fully operational within the second quarter, with initial services focusing on cancer cell activity.

ValiRx said the new subsidiary would allow the study of drug candidates in a range of cell lines to elucidate activity, toxicity and mechanism of action of test molecules.

The firm was planning to add further techniques and novel data generation technologies to the testing portfolio, together with data analysis and application expertise, with the aim of providing deep biological understanding of drug candidates and help design effective clinical trials.

Such new capabilities would be fully validated on in-house projects before offering to external users.

In due course, Inaphaea would build on the company's expertise in specific tests that support the development of treatments in women's health, ValiRx added.

“After a great deal of hard work by the entire ValiRx team, I am pleased to share this news about the formation of Inaphaea; the first step of our longer term ambition to create the unique tCRO service offering for early stage drug development,” said chief executive officer Dr Suzy Dilly.

“Over the next few weeks, we intend to transfer our own projects into the Inaphaea lab to continue their progress.

“I'm also delighted that after a year of supporting us through our commercial advisory board, Andrew Carnegie has agreed to join the team of Inaphaea in this full time position to support the initiation of services.”

At 1431 GMT, shares in ValiRx were up 4.27% at 11.73p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.