For drug developers, the leap from in-vitro to in-vivo to detect the toxicity of your compounds in whole organisms is expensive and time-consuming. Traditionally, drug developers look to rodent or other mammalian models to test the developmental and reproductive toxicity of compounds but these avenues have long timelines, high costs, and lead to overly complex study designs.

For those looking at the environmental toxicity of their compounds,  there are few tried and tested options to ethically check whether your compounds will be toxic to wildlife and animals. Traditional go-to animal models like fish or rodents have ethical considerations and can involve complex study designs and take a long time to answer your toxicity research questions.

Read about our toxicity work with Michelin, a Fortune 500 consumer good manufacturing company and the global leader in tyre manufacturing

C. elegans are a well-characterised, ethical model for environmental toxicity testing, with good concordance to mammalian models. Our use of C. elegans combined with our unique automated technology means we can detect toxicity much more quickly than the use of other in-vivo models.

Our Healthspan assay on adult sterile worms can detect chronic effects on ageing, mobility and behaviour, but we also conduct Developmental and Reproductive Toxicity (DART) assays. With 300 progeny produced by each healthy adult worm in 3 days, we can detect acute developmental and reproductive toxicity fast and with sensitivity.

We can measure toxicity in three different study types:

Acute toxicity

• We help you to understand if your drug causes short-term mortality for animals at high concentrations (similar to what you would see studying the impact of a single dose in rodents).

Reproductive and development toxicity

• Using manual toxicity assays, we can generate specific measurements on the impact of compounds on development and reproduction by quantifying population growth.

Chronic toxicity

• We help you understand the mortality impact of your drug on animals from long-term exposure at lower concentrations (similar to what you would see studying repeat doses in rodent models).
  
• We can also use our healthspan assays to assess if your compounds impact the health of an animal in old age more easily and quickly than you can see in mice.

We provide the following benefits:

• Cost and time-efficient assays for predictivity data prior to rodent models.

• Rich, sensitive data set that goes far beyond traditional manual lifespan assays.

• Standardised, population-scale acute and chronic testing for mutation and compound effects on both longevity and fitness.

• Team of multidisciplinary experts to advise you on study design and data analysis.