Attagene, Inc. is structured around accelerating drug discovery and development by providing innovative tools for examining signal transduction. Research scientists on the team have both academic and industrial backgrounds that combine expertise in signal transduction, functional genomics and gene discovery with knowledge of disease pathology. Developing transforming technologies for drug development and toxicity testing, the company has invented and commercialized the first multiplexed reporter technology (the FACTORIAL(TM)) for quantitative assessment of multiple signal transduction pathways in living cells. Using this platform, principals of the firm have developed new straightforward approaches to drug discovery and development and to the assessment of mechanisms underlying the toxicity of environmental chemicals. The firm offers unique screening services for the evaluation of biological activities and prediction of potential toxicities of pharmaceuticals, agricultural and industrial chemicals, cosmetics, and nanomaterials. Using its proprietary pathway-profiling platform - the FACTORIAL - Attagene has developed a suite of bioassays that assess the impact of a compound on activities of over ninety gene regulatory pathways and all forty-eight human nuclear receptors. FACTORIAL assays proved their utility for the evaluation of bioactivities of very different compounds, including chemicals, biologicals, nanomaterials and complex mixtures. FACTORIAL assays are available in many cell types and systems, from human and animal cell lines to primary cells to entire organs of live animals enabling the firm to establish an important position in development of pathway profiling technologies for drug development, toxicology and biomedicine. To accommodate changing environment, cell alters gene expression program. This adaptive response is mediated by intracellular network of regulatory pathways that relay to genomic DNA the signals that modulate gene expression. The signaling pathways communicate with DNA by using transcription factors (TFs), proteins that bind specific sequences within target genes. By assessing TFsâ activities one can characterize the functional status of cellular gene regulatory networ
