Ireland’s Almac Group routinely helps customers with microarray-based projects that sit at the intersection of today’s science and tomorrow’s personalized medicine.

One example: Almac’s diagnostic division recently announced a project to analyze 1,500 non-small cell lung cancer tumor samples from 15 research centers, with the hope of developing a genetic signature to stratify patients who do well after surgery and those who don’t.

Now Almac is hoping to build on that expertise with a new division dedicated to drug discovery, lead by Stephen Barr. “It’s a high risk strategy,” Barr says, “but the returns are massive.” Barr notes the Almac Group’s founder, Sir Allen McClay, has been an ardent exponent of exploring whether the company can find promising molecules or license them from academia and nudge them a few steps through the process.

Into Oncology

Barr says the goal is not to bring new therapies into late-stage trials, but just to the point where the proof-of-concept has been established. “We felt that was a natural progression—to move into drug discovery for ourselves,” says Barr. “There is no better time to be doing this.”

Because some of the personnel involved are working in oncology, the effort will begin there. But all therapeutic areas are possibilities. Barr asserts that many firms are doing exactly what Almac is doing. “We’re not novel in our makeup,” he says. “There are many companies involved in this space.” He didn’t mention any names, but more than a few large CROs are looking at ways to take on some of the duties traditionally associated with sponsors. As we wrote a while ago, PPD’s program to share risks and rewards is probably one of the best known in the industry.

Affy Shop

Almac has leaned on Affymetrix chips, but has extended such expertise with its own in-house patents. “We have invested a lot in the diagnostics and genomics platform,” says Barr. “We are going to utilizing the knowledge and intellectual property that has been developed there.”

The Almac team will be small in size but deep in experience, with long industry careers. A scientific advisory board is soon to be named. But no large-scale effort to augment its effort with biology- or chemistry-based laboratories is in the works. Says Barr: “We are not going to set up major screening facilities in house,” he says. “There are many good companies that offer those services. We’ll have minimal infrastructure and keep the costs down through outsourced means.”

In some cases, Barr predicts, the industry is responding to FDA encouragement and to the Critical Path agenda effort to link therapeutics and diagnostics. “The FDA is now really looking for that type of approach,” he says. “There is very much a movement in that direction. This will be the expected route compounds will go down.”