Toxikon and Ocean Ridge Biosciences (ORB), a genomic services provider to the life science industry, have formed a partnership to globally market their respective expertise and provide increased discovery through preclinical development services to its clients.

The two companies began their partnership with the development of an ocular disease model, assessing and validating target cytokine levels in inflamed versus healthy animal tissue. The lipopolysaccharides (LPS) injection-based uveitis model is now undergoing final validation for use in Toxikon’s preclinical ocular disease screening program.

Both companies have partnerships with other life science companies and academic research institutions and have created expanded commercial resources for drug discovery and development capabilities.

“We are pleased to now partner with Ocean Ridge Biosciences, and with shared goals and objectives to foster research and development collaborations, this partnership makes sense for our clients,” said Nancy L. DiGiulio, Toxikon’s vice president.

“Toxikon is a well-respected CRO that provides broad expertise in preclinical contract research with operations in the U.S. and Europe. We are honored to support Toxikon’s provision of services to their clients through our focused expertise in RNA profiling and Biomarker Discovery,” said David Willoughby, senior scientist and manager at Ocean Ridge Biosciences.