A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Medco Health Solutions (Franklin Lanes, New Jersey) and Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp; Burlington, North Carolina) reported a research agreement to advance the field of pharmacogenomics for advances in personalized medicine.

The reffort, which will be centered on tamoxifen, is the latest in linking individual genetics to the safety and efficacy of specific prescription drugs. Genotyping for the study will be performed using the FDA-cleared AmpliChip CYP450 test from Roche Diagnostics (Indianapolis).

Tamoxifen, a drug that deprives certain tumors of estrogen needed for their growth, treats some forms of breast cancer and prevents the disease from occurring in some women at high risk for the condition. About 10% of women using tamoxifen do not fully benefit from the drug because of variations in genes encoding drug metabolizing enzymes.

“This agreement is between two industry leaders that are at the forefront of the movement toward personalized medicine. Companion diagnostics can help physicians determine which drug will be most effective for particular patients. This will benefit patients and lower healthcare costs by improving outcomes, enhancing safety and reducing ineffective drug regimens,” said Myla Lai-Goldman, MD, executive VP, chief science officer and medical director for LabCorp.

Research has demonstrated that patients respond to drugs 50%-75% of the time. For many chemotherapy treatments, the response rate is as low as 25%. Genetic information can help determine the drugs that will be safest and most effective for particular patients. For example, the metabolism of specific drugs has significance in pharmaceutical safety and efficacy, and laboratory tests can identify genetic variations that affect the rate of drug metabolism.

LabCorp says it is the first in its industry to embrace genomic testing. Medco is a pharmacy benefit manager.

In other agreements:

• Fenwal (Round Lake, Illinois, Illinois) reported a partnership with Data Innovations (South Burlington, Vermont) to develop, distribute and license a data capture/reporting system for Fenwal’s automated blood component collection systems. The collaboration will allow blood centers to export data from Fenwal’s automated blood collection devices into the Instrument Manager system to generate standard and customized reports analyzing critical donor and procedural information.

The system will help blood centers eliminate the need to manually capture this information from Fenwal’s automated collection devices and enable them to more easily identify and track donor and procedure trends, further improving their collection management efforts. Fenwal will begin offering a data capture and reporting system with Data Innovations in 2008 for its Alyx, Amicus and Autophersis-C automated collection devices in the U.S., and will then expand this offering to Europe and other regions.

Fenwal develops products for transfusion medicine.

Data Innovations says it is the world’s largest clinical laboratory middleware company and offers comprehensive solutions encompassing pre-analytical, analytical, and post analytical process improvement.

• XTend Medical (Sun Valley, California) has signed an agreement with EvREst of the Southeast. EvRest will work with XTend to assist in sales of the Infopia telemedicine glucose meter and aide in the financing of sales to managed care companies and other healthcare organizations.

In addition, XTend will have the opportunity to present their other telemedicine products to the long term care facilities currently under EvRest management and to develop a pharmacy operation through its partner, Boulevard Pharmacy, to deliver medications to more than 6,000 long-term care facilities throughout the U.S.

XTend sells healthcare and wellness products to hospitals, managed care companies, nursing homes, physician groups and individual patients.

• Alpha Innotech (AI; San Leandro, California) a provider of bioanalytical systems for drug discovery and life science research, said it has established a product development and OEM supply agreement with R&C Biogenius (Los Angeles).

AI will supply R&C Biogenius a new bioimaging instrument optimized for R&C’s assay for multi-analyte single well ELISA tests. The agreement includes undisclosed development payments and sales milestones.

“The introduction of an integrated solution for simultaneously performing many important tests on a single biological specimen will reshape the molecular diagnostic market,” said Sia Ghazvini, VP of business development at AI.

R&C Biogenius specializes in R&D in the field of in vitro diagnostics, particularly in the areas of infectious disease and heart risk.

• Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, California) and BioTrove (Woburn, Massachusetts) reported an agreement to co-market the Agilent 6410 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer with BioTrove’s RapidFire high-throughput sample preparation systems. The two systems together provide an integrated solution for ultra-high-throughput preparation and analysis of in vitro biological assays in pharmaceutical drug research, according to the companies.

• Siemens Medical Solutions Diagnostics (Tarrytown, New York) and Sysmex America (Mundelein, Illinois) have extended a distribution agreement for automated urine sedimentation analyzers for an additional year.

Siemens will sell the Sysmex UF-100i fully automated urine cell analyzer and related ADVIA Urinalysis WorkCell in Canada and Puerto Rico.