VASTox penned two drug discovery deals worth a combined €1m last week.

The agreement sees the UK-based company entering a long-term drug discovery and toxicology screening contract with Rottapharm worth €365,000 over 12 months.

Under the terms of the deal, the two firms will collaborate in the generation of a screening model for osteoarthritis that will test potential drug candidates and therefore accelerate Rottapharm's discovery programme.

What VASTox brings to the deal is predictive safety and toxicology testing services using its proprietary technology platform, "vivo".

The second deal the company announced last week is with an unnamed European biotech company. VASTox will provide its medicinal chemistry and research services to support one of its new client's drug discovery programmes.

With this deal, VASTox bags up to €635,000 over 10 months. The agreement was secured after VASTox had successfully completed previous service contracts with the company.

"These are two very significant deals for VASTox as they further underline the benefits that our chemical genomics technology platform brings to drug discovery and highlight our strong expertise in chemistry," said VASTox's CEO Steven Lee.

"Furthermore these long-term partnerships will continue to validate our hybrid business model designed to generate maximum returns from our technology platform and scientific expertise outside our internal drug discovery programmes."

Meanwhile, California-based contract research organisation (CRO) Vitalea Science has announced it has received a government grant to develop and test assays in order to study a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) drug aimed at children and newborn babies.

The funding provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) will enable Vitalea to quantify intracellular uptake of the active metabolite of the new drug for Phase I trials.

According to the FDA, only a quarter of all drugs on the market have been studied and labelled for children. The main reason is the prior lack of sensitive analytical tools which required administration of drug doses and collection of blood samples that are too large for children and neonates.

Without feasible and safe means for paediatric testing and labelling, children can be placed at risk for under- or overdosing. In addition, the lack of age-appropriate formulations, such as liquids or chewable tablets, can result in improper administration of drugs.

"There is very little known about the drug disposition of nucleoside/nucleotide analogs in pediatric populations. Given the magnitude and frequency at which the youngest of children globally are exposed to these drugs, better clinical pharmacology tools are of high priority," said Dr Le Vuong, chief operating officer of Vitalea Science.

The CRO provides ultra-low detection of drugs that are administered to humans at safe microdose levels to directly measure how these drugs perform and are metabolized, using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS).

"We now have the tools to study drug disposition in pediatrics using AMS," said Dr Stephen Dueker, president of Vitalea.

"The level of sensitivity achieved with AMS is the highest for any known analytical instrument. Perinatal exposures and infant incorporation of a microdose of labeled NRTI drug may be quantified by AMS safely using permissible small blood samples."

In other preclinical services news, Asuragen has signed a deal with Illumina which enables the CRO to broaden its range of gene expression profiling services, using Illumina's platform.

With this new deal, Asuragen is now accepting whole-genome (WG) samples for gene expression profiling using Illumina's platform, Human-6 Expression BeadChip.

The technology contains more than 46,000 gene targets and allows researchers to generate WG expression profiles.

Combined with Asuragen's sample preparation, researchers can perform gene expression profiling from low amounts of starting sample, including those traditionally used in clinical settings, such as biopsies and fine needle aspirates.

"In response to customer requests, we are pleased to offer an additional choice in Gene Expression Profiling with the Illumina platform," said Rollie Carlson, president of Asuragen.

The molecular biology service provider, based in Texas, has successfully completed Illumina's Certified Service Provider (CSPro) certification and is now the first commercial service provider in the world to offer such expanded services.

"Our commitment to quality and innovative technologies is what inspired us to become an Illumina CSPro," said Scott Hunicke-Smith, vice president and general manager of Asuragen Services.

"The Illumina platform allows us to provide solutions to the experimental needs of our customers, as recent studies confirmed that Illumina's gene expression technology is capable of generating excellent quality and performance, and boosting the number of detected genes."