Tm Bioscience Sells Mayo Foundation on P450-2D6 Test

NEW YORK, Sept. 17 (GenomeWeb News) - Tm Bioscience of Toronto today announced that the Mayo Foundation has signed a two-year agreement to purchase the Tm Tag-It brand P450-2D6 drug metabolism test.

The Mayo Foundation of Rochester, Minn., will used the product in the Mayo Medical Laboratories, a facility that provides lab testing services for Mayo as well as other medical centers and hospitals, Tm said in a statement.

Tm's P450-2D6 test was launched in June. The company said that Mayo has begun internal validation tests for the product through an early access agreement.

The P450-2D6, a test that is designed to identify the presence or absence of mutations common in patients with atypical drug metabolism, is based on Tm's universal array platform and operates on the Luminex xMAP system.

The sale of such a microarray-based product is not without controversy. In June, Roche launched its own P450 microarray-based test only to receive a letter from the US Food and Drug Administration questioning the propriety of marketing a microarray-based test as an analyte specific reagent.