A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Affymetrix (Santa Clara, California) has granted Vita Genomics (Taipei, Taiwan) and its fully owned subsidiary, Shanghai GeneCore BioTechnologies, non-exclusive access to Affymetrix microarray technology to develop and market in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests for Alpha Interferon Treatment response in patients with hepatitis B and hepatitis C, as well as for early onset and allergic asthma in infants and young children.

The resulting microarray-based IVD products would provide clinicians with better diagnosis methods and more efficient approaches for treating patients and managing these diseases.

As part of the Powered by Affymetrix program, Vita Genomics is able to incorporate Affymetrix’ patented arrays into its molecular diagnostic assays developed to predict drug efficacy prior to treatment and assess risks to facilitate disease prevention.

“Application of using single nucleotide polymorphisms for translational medicine studies is a trend in the pharmaceutical industry in the post-Human Genome Project era,” said Ellson Chen, PhD, president and CEO at Vita Genomics.

“The microarray-based tools and applications in the Powered by Affymetrix program are accelerating the discovery and implementation of HBV, HCV and asthma companion and predictive diagnostics in this era of molecular medicine,” said Robert Lipshutz, PhD, senior vice president, molecular diagnostics and emerging markets at Affymetrix.

John Gu, PhD, senior vice president and chief business officer of Vita Genomics, said, “The development of companion test for certain drugs, especially for those drugs with important side effects or drugs that only benefit subpopulation groups, is reaching the next stage with this partnership.”

DR Systems (San Diego) reported four new picture archiving and communications system (PACS) contracts totaling nearly $5 million, with each contract worth more than $1 million.

The facilities awarding the contracts are the Olympic Medical Center (Port Angeles, Washington), Gottlieb Memorial Hospital (Melrose Park, Illinois), Adirondack Medical Center (Saranac Lake, New York) and United Community Hospital (Grove City, Pennsylvania).

Thermo Electron (Waltham, Massachusetts), a developer of analytical instruments, reported a purchase and supply agreement with Genomic Profiling Systems (GPS; Bedford, Massachusetts).

Under the two-year contract, Thermo will supply customized Cytomat 6001 incubation platforms for integration with GPS’ Growth Direct automated rapid microbiological detection system for the pharmaceutical manufacturing environment.

The Cytomat platform will provide automated culture plate incubation to complete the integrated Growth Direct system which significantly reduces incubation time – the foremost limitation of traditional culture-based tests used in the microbiological testing of pharmaceuticals.

The automated Growth Direct system uses digital imaging to accelerate testing. The system enumerates organisms grown in culture days to weeks earlier than feasible by the human eye.

GPS will be installing the first Growth Direct system in mid-2006 and will market and support the complete system to pharmaceutical companies.