Reify ([ree-uh-fahy]) — v. To regard something abstract as a material thing.) was founded in 2002 to translate the strategies and techniques of unsupervised machine vision and video microscopy into enabling products for drug discovery and development. Genomics and other platform technologies have revolutionized the healthcare industry yielding unparalleled amounts of raw information useful for understanding potential causes for disease.The complexity of the gene networks uncovered and the difficulties in defining and testing true drugable targets, however, have made it clear in the past years that even targets once believed to be simple are anything but. Genotypic complexity and the often unexpected interactions of drug candidates with more than one critical cell pathway demands an approach in which a cell's overlaying phenotype can be accurately assessed in an unbiased, scalable and cost effective manner. Reify's Visible Discovery™ platform quickly and repeatedly generates phenotypic fingerprints on each member of a population of cells to accurately measure and quantitate dynamic processes on a cellular or subcellular level, provides the solution.

Myosight™ Cardiotoxicity Screening
The withdrawal from the marketplace of several blockbuster drugs over the past decade due to negative cardiac effects has underscored the need for early assessment of cardiac liability in the drug discovery/development cycle. Data has shown that blockage of hERG, an inward rectifier potassium ion channel, can lead to QT prolongation, torsades de pointes and potential cardiac failure. A complication facing drug developers is that other endogenous ion channels can offset hERG interactions and therefore its measurement alone does not give a complete picture on which to make a go/no go decision. A number of techniques to overcome these challenges are currently available, though each has limitations. Reify's Myosight™ biomodule provides a highly integrated view of cardiotoxicity in vitro, allowing drug developers to capture multiple physiologic effects in a high-throughput manner either in conjunction with, or as a replacement for, hERG patch clamp assays. Throughput and cost savings from the use of Myosight™ enable its implementation early in the pharmaceutical value chain to identify compounds with/without QT risk saving companies time and money.

Visible Discovery™ Drug Screening
As systems biology approaches to drug discovery become more commonplace, phenotypic screens that capture cellular phenomena in a scalable unbiased and comprehensive fashion without the excessive draw on FTE time customary to these screens are essential. Reify brings to drug discovery products that comprise the best aspects of automation with uncompromising accuracy in measuring critical cellular parameters to deliver data pertinent to discovery. Discovery Biomodules have been optimized for fast (50+ frames per second) and slow (handful of frames per day) applications and currently include screens:

cell lineage,
neural degeneration and protection
cell motility
Cardiac function in neonal cardiomyocytes
Cardiac function in adult cardiomyocytes
Cardiac function in zebra fish and others.

Visible Discovery™ Key Benefits

• Generates robust population data for more confident decisions in development and discovery while decreasing costs

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• Machine vision and video analysis enable new scalable screens in otherwise intractable systems

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• Seamless fit with current high content screening instruments, standard or confocal microscopes and optics removes cost and workflow barriers

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• Light-source indifferent for screens in visible, fluorescent or both conditions

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• Application-specific biomodules optimize parameters for a growing number of screens