AstraZeneca Chooses ToxWiz Software from CCnet To Help Predict the Safety Profile of Drugs to Treat Liver Function Disorders

Cambridge Cell Networks (CCnet), a leading in-silico systems biology company is pleased to announce ToxWiz, its unique software linking genomics and proteomics data with pathways and cellular information is being used by major pharma company, AstraZeneca to predict potential pathological effects of compounds being used to treat diseases and disorders affecting the liver.

Scientists at AstraZeneca in Sweden are using ToxWiz to search computational models of more than 500 annotated pathways. Each pathway connects to a database of 800,000 abstracts and searching keywords is allowing AstraZeneca toxicologists to produce search results in a ‘white-board’ format, making it easier for them to quickly determine relationships between side effects and specific proteins or pathways.

Dr Scott Boyer, Principal Scientist and Head of Computational Toxicology at AstraZeneca commented: “We chose ToxWiz because it is one of the few software packages allowing integration of a range of complex data from a toxicology view point. Additionally, CCnet are listening in earnest to toxicologists, providing solutions to challenges we face and making appropriate software modifications as they are requested.”

“We utilise a variety of text mining tools to manually search data, now ToxWiz is helping us automate part of the work and more importantly, enabling us to perform tasks we were not able to before,” added Dr Boyer.

Dr Gordana Apic, CEO of CCnet commented: “We are delighted to see ToxWiz being used at such a major pharma company. AstraZeneca’s confidence in the software demonstrates ToxWiz’s utility as an invaluable enabling technology for toxicologists that want to make timely and informed decisions on compounds’ safety profiles before progressing them into costly in-vivo research.”