Gentronix Ltd was founded by Richard Walmsley in 1999 to commercialise a genotoxicity assay developed in his University laboratory at UMIST in Manchester. Genotoxins are chemicals that can damage the genome and most are carcinogens. Since 1999 Gentronix has grown from a grant-supported research enterprise to a successful revenue and investment-supported member of the NorthWest Biotech community in The UK. The company has developed a range of "GreenScreen" genotoxicity test platforms, and sells kits to customers in the pharmaceutical, household goods and water quality industries.
The particular expertise in Gentronix is in the development of new screening assays for Genotoxicity testing. At present this critical safety assessment is often left until the late pre-clinical GLP regulatory tests, and is restricted to a lead candidate and one or 2 backups. This is of course a very risky strategy: the compounds already carry a heavy investment of time and money, and there is a relatively high rate of failure or delay due to positive genotoxicity data - anything from 10-25% of compounds will carry genuine positive data.
Screening was originally not possible, as the regulatory tests required hundreds of milligrams of compound and the tests took weeks. The regulatory focus effectively stifled innovation for many years, but coinciding with the development of new high throughput, low compound requiring tests from Gentronix, the field of genetic toxicology was given a rude awakening. A series of papers starting in 2005 revealed what many had privately come to accept: the regulatory in vitro assays are simply not accurate, with more than half non carcinogens giving positive results. This has stimulated interest in the GreenScreen products both in many pharmaceutical testing labs and within international regulatory agencies.