The first product using the Liposome Company Inc.'s technologywill be on the market in a few months, the company announcedMonday at a scientific meeting in the Netherlands.

The product, a diagnostic called Staclot-LA, will detect amarker in blood plasma that interferes with tests of bleedingtimes. Doctors screening for clotting disorders can be misledby this marker, which falsely reports patients as bleeders.

The test, introduced Monday at the XIII Congress of theInternational Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, will bemarketed by Diagnostica Stago of Paris, the LiposomeCompany's exclusive licensee to the technology and patentscovering the product. Liposome will receive royalties on sales.

No price has yet been announced by Diagnostica Stago, saidLiposome spokeswoman Anne Van Lent. As for market size forthe test, Van Lent said that "our feeling is there are probably acouple of million retests needed a year."

Doctors routinely order tests of activated partialthromboplastin time (aPTT) for physical exams and beforesurgery. A number of conditions can cause false readings ofaPTT. The interfering marker, called lupus anticoagulants (LA),is one cause.

The new assay would be performed if a patient's blood showedincreased clotting time. The assay contains hexagonal PE, alipid phase that Liposome's scientists have characterized,which would absorb any interfering LAs.

Stock of the Princeton, N.J., company (NASDAQ:LIPO) closedMonday at $8.63, up 25 cents. -- RF

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