A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Confirma (Bellevue, Washington) and GE Healthcare (Waukesha, Wisconsin) reported they have expanded their partnership to offer Confirma service to GE Healthcare customers with CADstream.

Confirma will offer program consultation, applications training, customizable educational courses, and marketing and reimbursement consultation to GE Healthcare customers with CADstream for breast MRI.

Since July 2004, Confirma and GE Healthcare have partnered to deliver MRI technologies for breast cancer detection to healthcare providers. Under the agreement, GE Healthcare will continue to distribute CADstream to its MRI customers while Confirma will install, train and support CADstream. Currently, more than 200 CADstream systems have been installed at GE Healthcare customer sites worldwide.

“As physicians begin to offer breast MRI to their patients, there is increasing demand for a truly complete solution. Productive workflow and interpretation efficiency are critical to a complete offering. CADstream has been a key component of our solution for the past several years,” said David Handler, general manager, MR Global Marketing, GE Healthcare.

“This amendment demonstrates our commitment to GE Healthcare and its customers,” said Wayne Wager, president/CEO, Confirma. “We will offer customers expertise and support that continue to improve confidence in breast MRI.”

Recently published clinical studies support breast MRI for improved breast cancer detection and in March 2007, the American Cancer Society (ACS; Atlanta) started recommending that women with a 20%-25% or greater lifetime risk of breast cancer undergo an annual MRI in addition to mammography.

CADstream automates analysis, reporting and interventional planning of studies and promotes standardization with the incorporation of the ACS’s Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System, which guides the breast cancer diagnosis and decision-making process.

In other agreements:

• Rosetta Genomics (Rehovot, Israel) and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC; New York) reported that they will collaborate to develop microRNA-based diagnostic tests, early detection as well as prognosis, for diffuse large cell lymphoma (DLCL), transformed follicular lymphoma (TFL), and for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), three types of non-hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

“We are constantly expanding our pipeline with new diagnostic and therapeutic programs, both cancer and non-cancer-related, in order to maximize our leading position in microRNA intellectual property and proprietary technologies,” said Amir Avniel, president/CEO of Rosetta. “We are very excited to be collaborating with a leading research institution such as Columbia University Medical Center, and hope more collaboration will follow.”

Combining Rosetta technologies with CUMC’s expertise in cancer, researchers will screen for microRNAs (miRNAs) that may be used as potential biomarkers and drug targets for these NHL indications.

DLCL and TFL are the two most common types of NHL, accounting for about 45% of all new non-NHL cases. CLL is a type of cancer that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. It then invades the blood and can spread to other parts of the body, including the spleen. According to the American Cancer Society (Atlanta), in the U.S. alone about 43,000 people will be diagnosed with these types of cancers in 2007.

Dalia Cohen, global head of R&D at Rosetta, said, “40% of DLCL patients respond well to current therapies and have prolonged survival, whereas the remainder succumb to the disease, and we do not know why. We believe our technology will help answer this question, as well as speed up and simplify the diagnostic process.”

miRNAs are recently discovered, naturally occurring small RNAs that act as master regulators and have the potential to form the basis for a new class of diagnostics and therapeutics. Since many diseases are caused by the abnormal activity of proteins, the ability to selectively regulate protein activity through microRNAs could provide the means to treat a wide range of human diseases.

miRNAs also have been shown to have different expression levels in certain diseased vs. normal tissues. As a result, these differences potentially provide for a novel diagnostic strategy for many diseases. miRNAs are thought to play a key role in the differentiation of cells into specific cell types performing various functions in the body.

Rosetta develops miRNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

• Nationwide Respiratory (Waterloo, Indiana) and Masimo (Irvine, California), the inventor of Pulse CO-Oximetry and Read-Through Motion and Low Perfusion pulse oximetry, reported that they have entered into a preferred provider agreement making Masimo SET pulse oximetry technology available to Nationwide’s network of more than 150 respiratory homecare providers.

Nationwide Respiratory, part of the VGM Group — the nation’s largest member service organization for home medical equipment — is a national network of over 150 independent respiratory homecare providers in the U.S. with more than 400 locations. These homecare providers use the pulse oximeter to assess the oxygen saturation of a patient during overnight sleep tests in order to determine whether or not the patient meets established Medicare or private insurance guidelines for home oxygen therapy.