A Medical Device Daily

PPD (Wilmington, North Carolina) and Southern Research Institute (Birmingham, Alabama) have formed a collaborative agreement in pandemic and seasonal influenza vaccine research and development to provide clients a full spectrum of influenza vaccine development services by collaborating on client bids and projects.

This key collaboration enhances PPDs position as the first CRO to offer a comprehensive menu of vaccine assay development and testing services to support vaccine clinical trials with faster, more cost-efficient laboratory solutions

As part of the agreement, Southern Research will transfer its seasonal assays and reagents to PPD, strengthening PPDs influenza vaccine testing services. In return, PPD will help build Southern Researchs preclinical influenza and clinical pandemic/highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) testing business through client referrals.

PPD provides development and testing services for vaccines and biologics and offers a large collection of commercial vaccine assays. Southern Research is a preclinical developer and service provider of assays for influenza vaccine sample testing and has played a key role in the analysis and development of new and existing vaccines and antivirals for both seasonal and highly pathogenic influenza.

This key collaboration enhances PPDs position as the first CRO to offer a comprehensive menu of vaccine assay development and testing services to support vaccine clinical trials with faster, more cost-efficient laboratory solutions, said Christine Dingivan, MD, chief medical officer of PPD. Our agreement with Southern Research further expands our large collection of commercial vaccine assays with very important capabilities in the influenza vaccine field and enables us to expand our partnerships with influenza vaccine developers in the commercial, government and nonprofit sectors.

In other agreements and contracts news, BioImagene (Sunnyvale, California) has integrated Virtuoso, BioImagenes digital pathology workflow software, with several anatomic pathology (AP) laboratory information systems (LIS).

The Virtuoso – LIS integration enables sharing of data between the two systems in the pathology laboratory, making critical information readily available to pathologists. This assists pathologists to improve efficiency in digital slide analysis, case management and reporting, resulting in a streamlined workflow.

Integration between BioImagenes Virtuoso and LIS from the principal vendors is important and beneficial to laboratories using digital pathology systems, said Steve Yu, VP of the Technology Solutions Group (TSG) at BioImagene. It gives users access to case and patient information directly from Virtuoso without having to switch to the LIS. It also eliminates the need of manual re-entry of this data by the end-user.

• NewCardio (Santa Clara, California) reported that a U.S.-based CRO that provides early phase and specialty clinical drug development services to the pharmaceutical industry, has signed an MSA, licensing NewCardios QTinno software solution in order to deliver fully automated cardiac safety analysis in early phase QT studies.

In addition, the CRO has signed a services work order, including standard operating procedures and validation kits, as well as professional services, in order to accelerate its readiness for delivering ECG core lab services to its sponsor customers.

• Moffitt Cancer Center (Tampa) and Proteacel (Naples, Florida) said that they have entered a licensing agreement under which Proteacel has acquired the exclusive rights to the PORE technology for delivery of genes into cells.

Moffitt researchers have developed a technology that dramatically improves the functionality and performance of transfection technology. The patented Perforation Optimization and Repair Enhancement, or PORE, solves a number of immediate problems in the use of transfection by creating a higher level of efficiency and cell viability.