Mitsui Knowledge Industry begins to supply AQXeNA, accelerating the development of nucleic acid baseddrugs

June 29, 2020

Automation of analytical work supports the characterization of heavilymodified nucleic acids

Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co., Ltd. (MKI) has started to supply AQXeNA, a nucleic acid analysis platform, which automates the process of searching, development, and quality control related to the development of nucleic acid based-drugs. AQXeNA is a software package that combines the "Ariadne," which is a nucleic acid identification algorithm developed by RIKEN CSRS, the patented technologies of Tokyo Metropolitan University on microanalysis of RNA, and the peak detection algorithm of “Lipid Search,” which is a lipid identification software of MKI.

Since nucleic acid based-drugs have different action mechanisms compared to traditional pharmaceuticals, expectation on such drugs has been increasing in recent years as a new modality for developing next-generation drugs targeting diseases that have been difficult to cure. However, a large amount of complicated data are needed for the research and development of nucleic acidbased drugs as well as for their quality control. Researchers must spend a lot of time and effort to conduct analyses and various evaluations. MKI has developed the AQXeNA to automate this massive analytical work involved in the identification and analysis of nucleic acid metabolites in pharmacokinetic evaluation and quality control of nucleic acid based-drugs, so that such work can be conducted in an effective and accurate manner

Contact
Hiroshi Nakayama
Senior Research Scientist
Biomolecular Characterization Unit