A Diagnostics & Imaging Week
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta) reported $11.4 million in new contracts to four companies developing diagnostic tests that doctors and field epidemiologists could eventually use to quickly and accurately test patients for avian influenza H5N1 and other emerging influenza viruses, as well as more common influenza viruses.
It said the tests could provide public health experts with critical information on the influenza viruses circulating and help monitor for viruses that could cause a global influenza pandemic.
During the next year, the four companies will work to create tests that would detect seasonal human influenza viruses and differentiate influenza A H5N1 from seasonal human influenza viruses within 30 minutes. Because influenza viruses are constantly changing, the tests would also need to be quickly adapted if the virus mutates over time or if new viruses emerge that have the potential to cause a pandemic.
The CDC said the funding will advance work enabling commercialization of these products in two to three years.
"We have seen avian influenza infections since 1997, but we unfortunately still do not have a good way to quickly and easily distinguish at a patient's bedside whether they suffer from H5N1 or a more common type of influenza," said CDC Director Julie Gerberding.
Existing point-of-care tests can only determine if the patient is infected with seasonal influenza viruses A or B but cannot identify avian influenza H5N1. To test for H5N1, patient samples currently must be sent to one of about 100 designated labs nationwide that can perform specialized testing. The process can take four to 24 hours to complete, depending on shipping of samples.
The CDC, in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, selected the four recipients from 13 applicants.
The companies and proposed tests and funding amounts: GeneXPert (Sunnyvale, California), flu assay, $2.4 million; Iquum (Marlborough, Massachusetts), LIAT (Lab-in-a-Tube), $3.8 million; MesoScale (Gaithersburg, Maryland), multi-array Detection, $706,241; and Nanogen (San Diego), a point-of-care immunoassay, $4.
In other grants/contracts news:
• Premier Purchasing Partners (San Diego, California) reported a new agreement for blood bank analyzers, reagents, consumables and service with Ortho Clinical Diagnostics (Raritan, New Jersey), a Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, New Jersey) company.
The 36-month agreement is available to both acute-care and continuum-of-care members of the Premier alliance. It includes automated analyzers and consumables as well as a full line of traditional blood bank reagents.