Affymetrix, Inc. (Nasdaq:AFFX) today announced that the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC), part of the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, has selected its new DMET Plus Product for a national project to identify biologically relevant markers for drug response. Since the DMET Plus Product was launched last November, five additional organizations have adopted it to support studies investigating the relationship between genes and drug metabolism and 18 are scheduled to be trained.

Launched in December 2007, the CPMC has been using the Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 6.0 to identify genes associated with complex health conditions, such as cancer, heart and blood vessel diseases, and diabetes. With the DMET Plus Product, the CPMC will expand these investigations to include direct interrogation of markers for drug metabolism and transport to build a database of genetic information related to drug response.

“Without the DMET Plus Product we would have been confined to an ad hoc, one-off assay which limits us to the narrowest set of biomarkers,” said Michael F. Christman, Ph.D., president and CEO, the Coriell Institute for Medical Research. “In addition, some drug metabolism markers are highly challenging technically and the DMET Plus Product offers us the best chance of measuring them.”

The CPMC plans to enroll 10,000 individuals by the end of 2009, with an ultimate goal of 100,000. The data generated will greatly improve the scientific community’s understanding of why some subpopulations and individuals respond to a drug differently than anticipated. For example, a recent study has already shown that a large degree of individual variation to warfarin therapy is due to genetic factors.1

“Coriell Institute’s selection of the DMET Plus Product is an exciting validation of our panel of markers. The Institute is recognized by the Department of Health and Human Sciences as one of the top pioneers in the area of personalized medicine2,” said Kevin King, president and CEO, Affymetrix. “Using the SNP Array 6.0 followed by the DMET Plus Product is a powerful approach. Researchers believe that the data could lead to a better understanding of how rare genetic variations across individuals are related to disease, drug response, and safety.”

1 Caldwell, M. D., et al. CYP4F2 genetic variant alters required warfarin dose. Blood 111(8):4106-12 (2008)

2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Initiative on Personalized Health Care, Annual Report. Personalized Health Care: Pioneers, Partnerships, Progress https://www.hhs.gov/myhealthcare/

3 Frueh, F. W., et al. Pharmacogenomic biomarker information in drug labels approved by the United States food and drug administration: prevalence of related drug use. Pharmacotherapy 28(8):992–998 (2008)

About the DMET Plus Product

The DMET Plus Product, which includes an array, reagents, and software, delivers a robust, cost-effective method of directly measuring variations in genes associated with drug metabolism and transport. The panel includes markers in all FDA-validated genes3 and covers more than 90 percent of the current ADME Core markers as defined by the PharmaADME group (www.PharmaADMEorg). In total, the DMET Plus Product offers 1,936 drug metabolism and transport markers. For more information on the DMET Plus Premier Pack, please visit: www.affymetrix.com/dmet

About the SNP Array 6.0

The SNP Array 6.0 is a single microarray that runs on the GeneChip® System to simultaneously measure more than 1.8 million markers for genetic variation. The array enables researchers to genotype more markers across more individuals at a lower cost per sample compared to other methods. These higher-powered studies increase the probability of discovering genes associated with complex diseases. For more information on SNP Array 6.0, please visit www.affymetrix.com/genechip/snp6.affx