Partners to Develop Blood Test for 5-Fluorouracil

An agreement has been signed to advance development of a blood test for the quantitative measurement of the chemotherapeutic agent 5- fluorouracil (5-FU).
As 5-FU is the drug of choice for more than 1.5 million cancer patients each year, an assay to guide physicians in prescribing the correct dose to both optimize its therapeutic effects while minimizing its toxicity is a top priority. Furthermore, approximately 8% of the population suffers from dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD) deficiency, a condition characterized by absent or significantly decreased activity of the enzyme dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase. Individuals with this condition may develop life-threatening toxicity following exposure to 5-FU.
The partners committed to developing a 5-FU assay are Olympus Life and Material Science Europa, GMBH (Hamburg, Germany) and Saladax Biomedical Inc. (Bethlehem, PA, USA). Olympus manufactures instruments that provide innovative and intelligent systems to meet the high productivity demands of hospitals, integrated healthcare delivery networks, reference labs, blood banks, and pharmaceutic labs. Saladax Biomedical, Inc. is a research-based, health care diagnostics company focused on the development of personalized chemotherapy management (PCM) assays to test plasma levels of the most commonly used anti-cancer medicines.
Under the terms of the agreement, Saladax will adapt the first of a line of PCM assays for quantifying the concentration of 5-FU in cancer patients to the Olympus AU400 clinical chemistry system.
"There is a large body of published clinical evidence that managing 5-FU dosing by measuring blood concentration has a significant positive impact on response to therapy and reduction of toxic side-effects. However, today doctors have no clinical relevant tool by which to get this information. Saladax plans to launch a simple 5-FU test within the year, and we are pleased by the prospect of having it offered by a highly respected and quality partner such as Olympus,” said Dr. Salvatore J. Salamone, CEO of Saladax.


Related Links:
Saladax Biomedical Inc.
Olympus Life and Material Science Europa, GMBH