NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Partners & Partners will be the sole distributor of Aviir's tests and technologies in 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa as part of a deal announced today.
P&P will roll out a network, country by country, to distribute and promote Aviir's tests —including the Aviir MIRISK VP Assessment test for assessing an individual's risk for developing a heart attack — through its affiliate Qatar Heart Laboratory Holding, Aviir said.
The agreement also grants P&P exclusive rights to set up diagnostic laboratories using Aviir's technology in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and 12 other countries.
In a statement, Aviir CEO Douglas Harrington noted that the Middle East has seen obesity and diabetes rates soar, resulting in a rise in cardiac diseases.
"In the past decade, diabetic prevalence has reached more than 20 percent and obesity rates exceed 35 percent of the population in some Middle Eastern Countries," he said. "The governments and health care authorities in that region are now taking a proactive approach to finding and implementing solutions to those trends. We are looking forward to working with our new distributor to penetrate these hard-to-access markets and to providing an important new tool in the fight against catastrophic cardiac events."
Today's agreement follows last week's announcement by Aviir that it had raised $10 million in a second tranche of a private financing round. P&P was an investor in the round.
Aviir was founded in 2005 by cardiologists and researchers from Stanford University and specializes in developing tests for identifying patients at risk for cardiac events.