WaferGen Biosystems is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh Medical School to have it serve as the alpha test site for WaferGen’s SmartChip Real-Time PCR System.

WaferGen said SmartChip is designed as the first whole genome, high throughput gene expression real-time PCR platform that will deliver significant time and cost advantages to researchers in the gene expression and genotyping markets.

“We’ve had many conversations with pharmaceutical companies and academics and in their view it’s really a technology that is missing,” Alnoor Shivji, WaferGen’s CEO and chariman, told Medical Device Daily. “What was missing in the past was technology that gave you the performance of PCR, but has suffered from lack of throughput and was very cost prohibitive to do large, high-throughput studies or for the whole genome. We believe SmartChip can accelerate the growth of drug development. Pharmaceutical companies have millions of compounds they’d like to test but they just don’t have the financing to do this. This product can help by allowing them a way to test all of their compounds in a shorter amount of time and it will be much more cost effective.”

To put it into perspective, Shivji gave one example of a pharmaceutical company that did a small trial using 25 genes for 240 patients and they required 960 samples. Researchers used the best real-time PCR technology on the market with 10 microliter assays and it required 188 384-well plates. It took 300 hours. “With SmartChip they would have been able to do that with a single chip in one day,” Shivji said.

Under terms of the collaboration, Steven Shapiro, MD, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and his team will use SmartChip to support their identification of therapeutically relevant biomarkers in the areas of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

Shapiro also will be using SmartChip to determine how to do less intrusive lung biopsies because SmartChip actually requires a much smaller sample.

“Typical real-time PCR analyses are done using 15 microliters of tissue and our system would require 100 nanoliters, a 1,000-fold difference,” said Shivji.

WaferGen raised $12 million in 2Q07 which it said will be sufficient funding to carry the company through 2008.

“Our plan is to focus on the alpha testing at the University of Pittsburgh early next year with Dr. Shapiro,” said Shivji. “By 2009 we expect final release of the product.”

In other agreements news:

• Aethlon Medical (San Diego) reported it has initiated a research collaboration with ImQuest Biosciences (Frederick, Maryland) to study the in vitro effectiveness of the Aethlon Hemopurifier to clear HIV from blood.

The studies will document the rate at which the Aethlon Hemopurifier captures infectious forms of HIV, including multi-drug resistant strains of the virus. The studies will also identify the capture rate of gp120, a toxin shed from the surface of HIV, which causes apoptosis (programmed cell death) of immune cells. Depletion of immune cells is the hallmark of AIDS. The goal of the studies will be to reinforce and expand upon HIV data previously obtained by Aethlon researchers.

• Tutogen Medical (Alachua, Florida) said it has entered into a tissue supply agreement with the University of Miami Tissue Bank and has extended its existing tissue supply agreement with AlloSource (Centennial, Colorado).

Under terms of these new five-year agreements, the University of Miami Tissue Bank and AlloSource will provide Tutogen with various human tissues used in Tutogen dental, spinal and soft tissue repair product lines.

• GE Healthcare Financial Services (Chicago) signed a five-year vendor financing agreement with Sechrist Industries. Under the agreement, Sechrist customers will have access to a full range of equipment financing options including capital and operating leases, loans and customized programs.

“This financing agreement will provide our growing number of hospital and healthcare clinic customers with a means to afford critical medical equipment,” said Jack Rollins, CEO of Sechrist.