NEW YORK, Oct. 10 (GenomeWeb News) - Clinical reference lab Specialty Laboratories said today that it has signed an agreement to begin co-marketing Roche Diagnostics' AmpliChip CYP450 assay by the end of the month.
The AmpliChip CYP450, which is built upon the Affymetrix microarray platform, analyzes the cytochrome P450 2D6 and 2C19 genotypes to help determine the appropriate dosages of medications for a variety of conditions, including pain medication, cardiac disease, cancer, and depression.
David Weavil, CEO of Specialty Laboratories, said in a statement that the assay "can help determine whether a standard dose of a drug metabolized in a patient with a particular genotype would be appropriate, or whether it might cause significant or serious side effects, or even toxicity." The test can also "predict whether a standard dosing schedule of expensive medications would be cleared from a person's body so quickly that it does not achieve effective therapeutic levels," Weavil said.
Specialty said that it also plans to launch a marketing campaign "to educate clients about the test's value."