Pathogenica and Life Technologies Japan Release Assay to Detect Hospital Acquired Infections

May 3, 2012 - PRLog -- NAGASAKI, JAPAN AND BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – Pathogenica, a pioneer in pathogen sequencing analysis, and Life Technologies Japan, today announced an agreement to launch and distribute Pathogenica’s HAI (Hospital Acquired Infection) BioDetection Kit in Japan on the Ion Torrent™Platform. The kit is the first DNA sequencing analysis product that enables identification of infectious disease with high accuracy, at high specific strain resolution and at a scale that makes hospital-wide testing practical.  The kit can test more than 12 different pathogens and 15 resistance gene families in a single assay, and enables dozens of samples to be tested in one day.  Using the Ion Platform allows this high level of accuracy and also allows results to be delivered in less than a day in a very cost effective manner.

“Pathogenica’s technology combined with our Ion Torrent™ unique semiconductor based platform provides a complete solution for detecting and controlling hospital acquired infections,” explains Dr. Joydeep Goswami, President of Life Technologies Japan. “The ability to monitor the hospital environment for a number of prevalent infections on a daily basis, accurately and cost-effectively, enables hospitals to quickly understand where infections are coming from, isolate them, and stop them from spreading.  The Ion Torrent™ platform with its simplicity, speed, robustness and accuracy is the perfect platform to enable these types of assays.”

The complete Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) solution includes Pathogenica’s HAI BioDetection Kit and software and Life Technologies’ Ion PGM™ DNA sequencer.  The HAI BioDetection Kit extracts the most informative pieces of DNA from the input sample to not only determine which species is present, but also provide strain-level identification that is critical to surveillance applications and outbreak tracking. Pathogenica's analysis software provides simple, concise output reports that indicate which species and strains are present and at what levels. The intended use of the kits is for environmental monitoring, not diagnosis of hospital patients.

Each Pathogenica kit provides reagents for identification of the following pathogens and drug resistance markers per sample, including: Acinetobacter baumannii, Clostridium difficile, Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, Enterobacter aerogenes, Enterobacter cloacae, Klebsiella pneumonia, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Coagulase negative staph (epidermis, saprophyticus), Staphylococcus aureus, and common beta-lactamase resistance genes, mecA, and the vanA gene family.

“Making hospital care safer is a global priority,” explains Yemi Adesokan, co-founder and CEO of Pathogenica.  “Our partnership with Life Technologies provides access to many hospitals in Japan where together we can help to begin controlling the spread of infection very quickly.”

The Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM™) is marked for Research Use Only; not for diagnostic use.

About Pathogenica
Pathogenica combines the power of Cloud-based DNA sequencing analysis and next-generation DNA sequencing to revolutionize pathogen identification and enable real-time bio-surveillance. Its DxSeq™ platform offers new applications in health services through rapid multiplex identification of pathogens and drug resistance genes; providing personalized diagnosis for infectious diseases that allows for more effective diagnosis and treatment of patients. Pathogenica’s high throughput pathogen identification system performs rapid and highly sensitive identification of a wide variety of biomarkers using just a common assay protocol.  For more information, visit http://www.pathogenica.com.

About Life Technologies
Life Technologies Corporation  is a global biotechnology company with customers in more than 160 countries using its innovative solutions to solve some of today’s most difficult scientific challenges. Quality and innovation are accessible to every lab with its reliable and easy-to-use solutions spanning the biological spectrum with more than 50,000 products for translational research, molecular medicine and diagnostics, stem cell-based therapies, forensics, food safety and animal health. Its systems, reagents and consumables represent some of the most cited brands in scientific research including: Ion Torrent™, Applied Biosystems®, Invitrogen™, GIBCO®, Ambion®, Molecular Probes®, Novex®, and TaqMan®. Life Technologies employs approximately 10,400 people and upholds its ongoing commitment to innovation with more than 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses. LIFE had sales of $3.7 billion in 2011. Visit us at our website: http://www.lifetechnologies.com.

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