Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation to begin evaluation of Quantech's FasTraQ Diagnostic Test System
PRNewswire -- Quantech Ltd. recently announced an agreement with Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation (MMRF) to begin an in-hospital evaluation of Quantech's FasTraQ Patient Treatment Information System. Quantech's FasTraQ system is designed to enable emergency room personnel to perform urgent diagnostic tests on site in less than one-half of the time required by the fastest hospital laboratory diagnostic systems currently available. The MMRF, which oversees research at Hennepin County Medical Center, will use a panel of three heart-attack tests and one test for the determination of pregnancy.
"Cardiac-enzyme tests are most useful if they can be performed in less than 15 minutes," said Robert Case, chief executive officer of Quantech. "Unfortunately, the fastest current hospital laboratory testing procedures take at least 30 minutes and typically much longer than that. Our pre-clinical research demonstrates that the FastTraQ system can provide emergency personnel with the results of cardiac-enzyme tests in less than 10 minutes."
Pregnancy tests are important for women of childbearing age who may be candidates for an emergency medical procedure such as x-rays or the administration of certain drugs that could injure a fetus. FasTraQ dramatically shortens the time needed for such a test. In the MMRF research, two blood samples will be drawn from each patient tested, with one sample going to the hospital laboratory and the other tested in the FasTraQ system. The results will then be compared in a statistical analysis. Phase I of the study is expected to take approximately six weeks.
Based in Eagan, Minn., Quantech is completing development of its Emergency Department (ED) Patient Treatment Information Platform. The core of this platform is Quantech's user-friendly and rapid diagnostic system that uses its proprietary surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology. The Quantech FasTraQ instrument will allow the ED staff to perform time-critical diagnostic tests for multiple patients, simultaneously and directly from tubes of whole blood. The platform will also allow the wireless delivery of test results directly to the appropriate ED nurse and physician at bedside in less than 15 minutes, without further ED staff intervention.
The FasTraQ is expected to include an initial menu of approximately 20 STAT tests grouped in patient diagnosis-related panels such as cardiac enzymes (heart attack), pregnancy, red and white blood cell counts, blood coagulation, electrolytes and kidney function. Additional tests for liver functions, drugs of abuse and therapeutic drugs and other STAT tests are also expected to be available on the system. Quantech has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market for clinical use its tests for the cardiac enzymes Myoglobin and CK-MB and the pregnancy enzyme hCG. Quantech also holds majority ownership of HTS Biosystems, Inc., (www.htsbiosystems.com), a company whose mission is to provide high-throughput screening systems to the functional genomics, proteomics and drug discovery markets.
Source: Quantech Ltd.