Billerica, MA, EMD Millipore, the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, today announced that the company will be the initial distributor of HepaRG(TM) human hepatic cells from Biopredic. HepaRG cells, derived from a hepatocellular carcinoma, are supplied as cryopreserved, terminally differentiated cells and express major liver specific functions including Cytochrome P450 enzymes and drug transporters.

HepaRG cells provide a number of advantages over primary hepatocytes and liver slices for characterization of the uptake, metabolism, and disposition of drug candidates, drug discovery, and high throughput screening. The supply of primary cells and tissue can be unpredictable and other transformed lines such as HepG2 have not gained widespread use due to loss of specific liver functions such as Cytochrome P450, thus impacting the proper assessment of toxicity.

“With more than 900 drugs having been implicated in causing liver injury and toxicity, there is a need for more accurate prediction of hepatic cytotoxicity and genotoxicity in humans,” notes Umesh A. Patel, Ph.D., Director, Lead Discovery. “While in vitro human liver preparations offer the most pertinent models, availability and inter-donor variability are significant drawbacks. In contrast, HepaRG(TM) cells reproducibly express the activities drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters to facilitate ADME/tox studies.”

About EMD Millipore

EMD Millipore is the Life Science division of Merck KGaA of Germany and offers a broad range of innovative, performance products, services and business relationships that enable our customers’ success in research, development and production of biotech and pharmaceutical drug therapies. Through dedicated collaboration on new scientific and engineering insights, and as one of the top three R&D investors in the Life Science Tools industry, EMD Millipore serves as a strategic partner to customers and helps advance the promise of life science.

Headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, the division has around 10,000 employees, operations in 67 countries and 2010 revenues of $2.2 billion. EMD Millipore is known as Merck Millipore outside of the U.S. and Canada.