Alliance to Develop Prostate Cancer Test

An agreement to develop and market a quantitative point-of-care diagnostic test for prostate cancer has been announced by Response Biomedical Corp. (Vancouver, Canada) and Nippon Kayaku Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan).

Under the terms of the agreement, Nippon Kayaku will fund the development and Japanese regulatory approval of a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for use on the Ramp system of Response Biomedical. Nippon Kayaku will have exclusive sales and distribution rights for Japan, and Response Biomedical will reserve the rights for the rest of the world. The Ramp system offers accurate, rapid, and easy-to-use point-of-care
testing.

"This agreement will result in a test that will allow the steadily increasing number of prostate cancer patients and their physicians to eliminate the waiting and stress involved with current PSA testing methods,” said Masafumi Satou, director of the diagnostic agents department at Nippon Kayaku.

In a separate development, Rsponse Biomedical has announced the completion of beta testing of the Ramp system and myoglobin blood test. The preclinical study was conducted at Ceqal, Canada's leading reference method laboratory and St. Paul's Hospital, both in Vancouver. Response Biomedical reports that the Ramp system showed a high degree of reproducibility, assuring the readiness of the system for upcoming clinical trials.



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