A Medical Device Daily

Charles River Laboratories International (Wilmington, Massachusetts), a provider of systems used for drug discovery and development, and Luminex (Austin, Texas) reported that they have entered into a licensing agreement whereby Charles River will use Luminex's xMAP technology within Charles River's Research Models and Services business segment.

The Luminex xMAP technology is designed to enable multiple assays to be performed in a single well, or multiplexed, using suspended microspheres or beads. Up to 100 different simultaneous assays can be performed in a single microtiter well, both rapidly and precisely. Charles River's Research Animal Diagnostic Services division will use the technology to create the Multiplexed Fluorometric ImmunoAssay (MFIA), which will be adopted as the platform for screening laboratory animal serum samples for infectious disease.

In other agreements:

• Source Scientific (Irvine, California) has been selected by NeoMatrix (also Irvine), inventor of the HALO breast cancer screening system, to manufacture this system at its new Irvine manufacturing facility. NeoMatrix said it will introduce HALO product this year after a successful test-marketing program.

Kevin Morton, CEO of NeoMatrix, said, "We wanted to take advantage of Source Scientific's existing infrastructure and experienced management."

Production of the HALO system is expected to begin in 1Q06. Source Scientific said it expects to increase its manufacturing staff by about 15%.

Source Scientific provides design and production services exclusively to medical device companies.

• Cangen Biotechnologies (Bethesda, Maryland) reported expansion of its ongoing research collaboration with Olympus (Tokyo), initiated in May 2005, to develop a hybrid DNA-based and protein-based test for early detection of lung cancer. The expanded collaboration includes funding for a prospective clinical study.

The goal of this collaboration is to establish a blood-based molecular lung cancer diagnostic via identification of specific DNA markers. Several key DNA markers with 70% to 80% accuracy have been identified from surgically resected samples obtained by Cangen from Hyundai Hospital in Korea during 2005. The identified markers can be used as a hybrid with protein-based markers to improve sensitivity and specificity. Cangen has begun patient recruitment for the study at clinical sites in Asia and will receive funding from Olympus in support of the study and ongoing research and clinical development efforts regarding lung cancer detection. Cangen will manage the study from its Asia Clinical Trial Center in Seoul, Korea.

Olympus and Cangen said they are targeting FDA approval after two years.

• Acacia Research (Newport Beach, California) said that its CombiMatrix group has signed a non-exclusive agreement with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Denver) under the company's CombiCore access program. With the agreement all University of Colorado researchers can purchase, through their microarray core facility, CombiMatrix's CustomArrays and CatalogArrays, including array processing services performed at the University of Colorado Health Science Center's Microarray Core Facility.