In a ranking study, which is also called drug candidate selection study, several drug candidates are ranked in many respects. In this study the toxicity of 5 drug candidates was investigated by metabonomics. Ranking studies are typically very small studies. In this case, the study protocol was limited to 4 animals per compound, one shared control group, one pre-dose sampling time point and one post-dose sampling time point. The study protocol was not adapted to specific requirements of metabonomic studies, as metabonomic analyses were an addendum to typical toxicology investigations performed anyway for this study.
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