The 3rd dimension challenges
the boundaries of in vitro

Launching a new drug and making it available to patients and healthcare professionals is not an easy task; it is the result of a long, complex and costly process. According to statistics published by the LEEM* in 2012, for every 10,000 targeted molecules, only 10 become actual drug candidates, and only one is finally granted marketing authorisation. The challenge in healthcare research is to develop new drug candidates that are tailored to the patients genetic characteristics and can therefore offer more potent and less toxic treatment. Ambitions run high at Genel and we aim to provide pharmaceutical companies and healthcare laboratories with innovative services and products to maximize their efficiency and speed up the release of new cancer treatments that are adapted to patients.

High-Content Analysis and 3D cultures to Cancer Drug Discovery

Genel introduces an unprecedented study process that examines the effect of candidate drugs on new generation 3-dimensional cellular models that are equivalent to actual cancerous tumors. This new process of phenotypic screening allows for an increase in the reliability of the small molecules screening, a decrease in the required number of animal testing, and a reduction of the duration of preclinical trials. This innovative method also allows for the screening of small interfering RNAs (siRNA) which are molecules that are capable of supressing the expression of a gene. RNAi constitutes therefore a molecular tool to deduce a function of a gene from its suppression. Knowing that the majority of cancers are caused by gene defects makes this prospect a very attractive one indeed. Genel is one of the first companies in the world to offer this type of screening for cancer-related gene identification.