Immunicon and Diagnostic Hybrids Sign Distribution Agreement

Immunicon Corporation and Diagnostic Hybrids (DHI, Athens, OH, USA) signed a definitive license, development, supply, and distribution agreement to develop and commercialize products in the field of clinical virology diagnostics, starting with a panel of multiplex respiratory virus and sexually transmitted infection assays. Financial and other details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Byron Hewett, president and chief executive officer of Immunicon commented, We are excited about this collaboration. The clinical virology market is a natural extension for our enrichment technologies and rare cell analysis platforms beyond our current presence in cancer. By combining DHI's expertise in viral antigen detection and specimen processing with our technologies, we expect to deliver highly sensitive, rapid assays where there is currently a significant and unmet medical need.

The clinical virology product portfolio will be developed for Immunicon's EasyCount system, which is a small, automated analyzer based on fluorescence microscopy. Immunicon and DHI believe that a variety of virus detection kits with multi-target identification capability can be developed with sensitivity superior to current rapid methods, possibly approaching performance of culture-based and molecular tests. The definitive respiratory virus culture testing can require up to two days and most polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based tests are either commercially unavailable for certain viruses or hospital laboratories do not have the technical staff and specialized equipment required to develop home-brew assays.

David Scholl, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of DHI commented, Our innovative approach to cell-based diagnostic products has created strong customer relationships with clinical virologists. For example, Elvis and the MixedCells product lines have made high sensitivity test results for herpes and the seven major respiratory viruses possible in 16-48 hours. We believe that Immunicon's EasyCount System and proprietary ferrofluid technology may offer automated, reliable, and easily interpreted results with sensitivity close to gold standard cell culture assays and much faster.



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