NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Qiagen said after the close of the market Thursday that it has inked a cardiac point-of-care diagnostics alliance in China with Lepu Medical Technology, a medical device firm based in Beijing.
Under the deal, Lepu will market in China Qiagen's ESEQuant Lateral Flow System with five cardiac marker tests developed by Lepu intended to diagnose acute myocardial infarction. According to Qiagen, the system will be used in emergency rooms and the tests will be able to provide an accurate diagnosis within minutes at the point of care
China's State Food and Drug Administration has already approved the system with the tests, said Qiagen.
Lepu will market the system under the name Lepu Quant-Gold. Qiagen said that Lepu will initially receive 750 ESEQuant systems for China, but that number is expected to grow.
Qiagen acquired the ESEQuant system when it purchased German firm ESE for $19 million in early 2010. At the time, Qiagen said that the acquisition would open new opportunities in healthcare and applied testing for Qiagen, enabling low-throughput molecular testing in settings where a laboratory infrastructure is not accessible and fast turnaround is required.
Qiagen noted in its statement today that the China approval marks the first regulatory approval in human healthcare for the ESEQuant platform.
"This agreement advances two strategic initiatives," Frank Krieg-Schneider, head of global strategic alliances & OEM at Qiagen. "First, our geographic presence is further broadened by the addition of important point of need assays in China. China today represents Qiagen's third-largest country in sales. Secondly, we are driving platform success by launching ESEQuant as an SFDA-approved device in a lifesaving medical application, a milestone for our emerging point-of-need portfolio."
Financial and other terms of the alliance were not disclosed.