A Medical Device Daily

Affymetrix (Santa Clara, California) and Partners HealthCare (PC; Boston) said that they have entered into a three-year translational research collaboration to develop microarray-based diagnostics for complex diseases such as newborn hearing loss, autism and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Partners researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS; Boston), Partners HealthCare and Harvard Medical School-Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG) will create and validate microarray tests in Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments laboratories.

“This collaboration with Affymetrix will allow us to better translate innovations and research discoveries at Partners into highly valuable clinical diagnostic tests and technologies that will improve patient management and care,” said Trung Do, executive director of business development at PC.

In other agreements news:

• Abbott (Abbott Park, Illinois) reported that it has signed an agreement with the American Red Cross (Atlanta) to supply 20 of its Abbott Prism System fully automated blood screening instruments for its five U.S. National Testing Laboratories. These laboratories test 7 million units of blood annually. The contract begins immediately and is expected to run through 2011. No additional terms were disclosed.

Abbott's PRISM System is used to screen donated blood by more than 30 countries, or more than 25% of the global blood supply, according to the company.

• CardioVascular BioTherapeutics (Las Vegas) reported it has signed a master service agreement with global clinical research organization (CRO) Kendle (Cincinnati). Kendle will support CVBT in its Phase II clinical trial ensuring that the protocol and study adhere to FDA regulatory requirements. Kendle has worked with CVBT to finalize the protocol that will be submitted to the FDA.

The clinical trial is evaluating CVBT's drug candidate, with Cardio Vascu-Grow as its active ingredient, which is injected into no-option heart patients to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis.

The Phase II clinical trial is planned to be an international, multi-site clinical trial performed in the U.S., Canada and Europe, for patients not eligible for traditional interventional therapies such as bypass or stenting procedures. Kendle is now screening sites for participation in the Phase II clinical trial.

• Positron (Houston), a developer of PET medical devices, reported that it has partnered with MIMvista (Cleveland) to provide MIMcardiac display and analysis software for their mPower brand scanners.

MIMcardiac, part of the MIMvista Corporation fusion and display software suite, will provide Positron's customers the ability to register 3-D computed tomograph coronary angiograms (3D CTCA) and functional cardiac studies acquired on the mPower scanner, as well as triangulate between 3-D and cross-sectional images.