Qiagen and Lepu Medical to provide rapid diagnosis of heart attacks

BEIJING and HILDEN, Germany – Sample & assay technologies company, QIAGEN, has announced an agreement with Lepu Medical Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd to provide QIAGEN's ESEQuant Lateral Flow System for use in emergency rooms, in conjunction with Lepu Medical's tests for cardiac markers that diagnose acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). The agreement is in line with Qiagen's expansion into China and adds a new point of need diagnostics application in its portfolio.

China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) approved the ESEQuant Lateral Flow detection system with Lepu Medical's five cardiac marker tests. The system will be marketed in China under the name LEPU Quant-Gold.

"We are very pleased to begin this relationship with the Lepu Group and meet a pressing need for heart patients by combining ESEQuant's quick turnaround time with the reliability of Lepu's tests for cardiac biomarkers," said Dr Frank Krieg-Schneider, head of Global Strategic Alliances & OEM at QIAGEN.

Dr Krieg-Schneider said the agreement advances two strategic initiatives for Quiagen. "First, our geographic presence is further broadened by the addition of important point of need assays in China, which today represents our third-largest country in sales," he said. "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."

The agreement starts off with a shipment of 750 ESEQuant systems for China and is expected to grow. The systems address the need in emergency rooms for quick response to patients suffering from heart attacks with appropriate treatments.

Current procedures often delay treatment by an hour or more. These procedures usually involve ambulance personnel taking samples to test for cardiac markers, and upon arrival at the hospital these are sent to a laboratory. Qiagen's ESEQuant platform will run Lepu's tests to measure key cardiac markers immediately after the ambulance arrives at the emergency room, thus allowing accurate diagnosis within minutes at the point of care. As of 2009, public records show that China has over 14,000 public hospitals and an additional 5,700 private hospitals.