Myriad Genetics and Abbott Laboratories Expand Collaboration

08-Jan-2004

SALT LAKE CITY, Myriad Genetics, Inc., and Abbott Laboratories, Inc. have expanded their strategic alliance to include a broad new pharmacogenetics program, the Company announced today. The research collaboration will focus on identifying genetic variation within the general population around drug targets in various stages of development. Abbott will fund all research under this collaboration and will retain sole ownership of the results. Myriad will receive a first right on personalized medicine products for reference lab uses that result from the collaboration.

Myriad will use its high-throughput sequencing technologies and proprietary mutation screening software to analyze samples from various populations to identify genetic polymorphisms, or differences in the DNA between individuals. The results of this collaboration may help Abbott's drug discovery programs develop drugs that will be the most effective for the widest range of patients.

"We are pleased to expand our successful relationship with Abbott into pharmacogenetics, an area in which Myriad can bring to bear its proprietary technologies," said Peter Meldrum, President and Chief Executive Officer of Myriad Genetics, Inc. "There is significant potential through this collaboration to develop new personalized medicine products in areas of important and growing healthcare needs."

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"Abbott is pleased with the success of its research alliance with Myriad, including the isolation of a major gene linked to depression," said Brian Spear, director of Pharmacogenomics, Abbott Laboratories. "Myriad's technology and expertise are valuable to Abbott's drug discovery and development efforts in areas of significant unmet medical need such as depression, obesity and diabetes."

Myriad's Pharmacogenetics Technologies

Pharmacogenetics is the application of the knowledge of genetic diversity for the improvement of the specificity, safety and efficacy of therapeutics. The science of pharmacogenetics holds the promise of delivering personalized medicine products that respond to an established genetic profile for specific individuals. Knowing an individual's likely reaction to a drug in advance may decrease the occurrence of adverse effects while improving the drug's effectiveness, potentially leading to better outcomes and lower overall healthcare costs. Pharmacogenetics may also identify individuals who have a known disease genotype and might benefit from therapeutic intervention prior to the onset of symptoms of the disease.

Drawing upon its more than twelve years of genomics experience, Myriad has developed the capacity, high-throughput automated processes and proprietary bio-informatics tools, to create what Myriad believes is an unmatched pharmacogenetics resource.

Myriad has created a proprietary suite of software that automatically accomplishes many of the most demanding tasks in pharmacogenetics. These include designing primers, performing base calling, building consensus sequences, assembling contigs, identifying sequence variants, assigning allele calls, and defining haplotypes. Myriad's comprehensive, integrated software dramatically increases quality, speeds analysis and facilitates the smooth and efficient implementation of large-scale sequencing and polymorphism discovery projects.

Myriad also performs sequence variant discovery in genes related to drug metabolism and absorption using its validated sequencing-based mutation detection technology. Mutation screening is focused on those parts of a gene with a high probability of containing functionally relevant variants, i.e., coding and regulatory regions. A comprehensive analysis of genetic variation influencing drug response within a clinical trial will include not only sequence variants in the drug metabolizing genes, but also variants within the drug's target protein as well as other genes that may influence the target protein's biochemical effect.

Myriad applies these technologies to uncover genotype-phenotype associations that allow patient stratification in clinical trials based upon differential drug metabolism among individuals. This program can maximize the value of clinical trials by improving their efficacy through the exclusion of non-responders. It can also improve the safety profile of drugs by minimizing adverse effects, potentially shortening the duration and the size of phase III and phase IV clinical trials. The benefits may continue even after FDA approval. In the last decade more than a dozen approved drugs have been withdrawn from the market. In most cases the withdrawal was precipitated by adverse effects that occurred in less than 0.1% of patients receiving the drug. Examining genetic variation provides the opportunity to uncover genotype-phenotype correlations that may allow the exclusion of a subset of at-risk individuals.

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