A Medical Device Daily

biOasis Technologies (Vancouver, British Columbia) reported that a major step in the application of its technology for diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was achieved by the signing of an agreement with Fleet Bioprocessing (Hampshire, UK), which brings expertise in the development of immunoassays.

"The astronomical costs associated with Alzheimer's disease have a serious impact on the afflicted individuals, their loved ones and society as a whole. There has not been an accurate in vitro diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease, which makes it difficult to effectively manage the disease," said Rob Hutchison, CEO, biOasis. "We believe that the future availability of an Alzheimer's disease test targeted to p97 will enable earlier diagnosis, quantitative disease monitoring and better patient outcomes. If earlier diagnosis and improved patient management result in delaying the average onset of the disease by even one-year, society would save in excess of $12 billion annually. The agreement with Fleet will reduce product development timelines for the biOasis p97 Alzheimer's test and enable faster entry into the $36 billion IVD market."

Alastair Dent, managing director of Fleet said, "We are delighted to have the opportunity to leverage our deep experience in the development of world-class diagnostic products in combination with the proprietary p97 biomarker from biOasis. We are confident that we can jointly deliver a leading edge product that will both positively impact Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and drug therapy monitoring, and create significant value for blue chip diagnostic companies when licensed for use on their immunoassay systems."

In other agreements/contracts news:

• IsoRay (Richland, Washington) has signed a distribution agreement with Oncura to distribute the I-125 brachytherapy seed, OncoSeed. Dwight Babcock, chairman/CEO, said, "By adding I-125 seeds to our prostate product offering we can now be a full service provider to our customers. OncoSeed brings with it a substantial and well documented track record of efficacy. While we believe that Cesium-131 adds an important new dimension to brachytherapy for a variety of anatomic sites including prostate, we see strategic value in supporting our customers that have not yet converted all their practice to Cesium-131."

• McKesson (Atlanta) has signed an agreement with Continuum Health Partners (New York) to replace multiple medical imaging systems with a single integrated imaging solution aimed at streamlining the workflow and improving the productivity of more than 10,000 physicians. Continuum will deploy the Horizon Medical Imaging picture archiving and communications system across its enterprise of hospitals and clinics that perform more than one million patient exams annually within the boroughs of New York.