Cellumen and Drug Safety Executive Council Announce Findings from In Vitro Discovery Toxicology Webinar

Cellumen, Inc., a discovery toxicology company, and the Drug Safety Executive Council (DSEC), a peer-to-peer membership to advance the development of better and safer medicines, today announced findings from "Using In Vitro Methods to Predict In Vivo Toxicity: Where Are We, Where Do We Need to Go?” a webinar held on Jan. 15, 2009.

During the webinar, participants were polled on four key areas of focus. Of responding participants:

• 54 percent of respondents felt that hit-to-lead was the stage of drug development where early toxicity assessment is most valuable;
• 75 percent of respondents believe that both rodent-predictive in vitro models and human-predictive in vitro models are important;
• 23 percent of participating organizations will spend up to $100,000 in early in vitro toxicology testing in 2009; and
• 33 percent of participating organizations plan to spend up to 35 percent of their budget for early in vitro toxicology on an outsource basis.

The webinar was moderated by Ernie Bush, Ph.D., Vice President of Collaborative Projects for the DSEC, and attended by more than 170 participants. Joining Dr. Bush on the panel were: David Brewster, Ph.D., Vice President of Preclinical Safety at F. Hoffman La Roche; Patricia "Kate” Johnston, Ph.D., CSO and Vice President of Collaborative Development at Cellumen; Klaus Krauser, Ph.D., Senior Director of Drug Safety Evaluation at Arena Pharmaceuticals; Warren W. Ku, Ph.D., Senior Director and Head of Exploratory Safety Differentiation at Pfizer Global R&D; and Laszlo Urban, MD, Ph.D., Global Head of Preclinical Safety Profiling at Novartis (NIBR).

"I am honored to have been a part of such a distinguished panel discussion,” says Dr. Johnston. "On this panel, we emphasized the importance of realizing value and reducing the amount of money spent on drug development. These findings only confirm the importance of identifying toxic compounds earlier in drug discovery. Cellumen currently provides the industry the necessary tools to re-evaluate the drug pipeline, and in turn, save significant amounts of money annually.”

ABOUT CELLUMEN

Cellumen is the leading innovator in Cellular Systems Biology (CSB™) solutions providing the most accurate predictions of drug efficacy and safety, thus reducing failure rates and cutting development costs. Cellumen’s CSB solutions are driving Discovery Toxicology by addressing the full complexity of disease and safety. Leading global organizations, including top pharmaceutical companies, the EPA, FDA, and NIH, partner with Cellumen. Cellumen is a partner company of Safeguard Scientifics. Other investors include Novitas Capital, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and Innovation Works. For more information about Cellumen, please visit www.cellumen.com.

ABOUT DRUG SAFETY EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

The DSEC is a non-profit peer-to-peer membership formed in cooperation with various heads of global safety for R&D leaders to work collaboratively and advance the progress of drug development. DSEC membership is limited to employees of companies that advance and transform the current state of drug development in both small and large molecule pharmaceuticals. The Drug Safety Executive Council is organized and funded by Cambridge Healthtech Associates. www.drugsafetycouncil.org