Medical Device Link.

TRENDS & PERSPECTIVES

• Diba Industries (Danbury, CT) announced the opening of a new European representative office in Zurich, Switzerland, to better assist their growing global customer base. The removal of time zone differences will allow the office, headed up by applications engineer Hernan Lauber, to improve customers’ sales and service support time.
  
  
• Biosearch Technologies Inc. (Novato, CA) has been granted a worldwide license to the noncoding DNA patents owned by Genetic Technologies Ltd. (Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia). Under the new patents, Biosearch Technologies will become the first oligonucleotide synthesis company to take a license from Genetic Technologies Ltd. to specifically manufacture and distribute oligos, probes, and primers for research use only.
  
  
• Seegene Inc. (Seoul, South Korea) announced the results of several clinical studies that reveal multipathogen diagnostics are critical for accurately diagnosing infectious diseases such as sexually transmitted diseases and respiratory virus infections. The results effectively conclude that conventional testing regimens relying on single-pathogen tests leave an alarmingly high percentage, some as high as 67%, of patient infections undiagnosed.
  
  
• The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Washington, DC) has partnered with Becton, Dickinson and Co. (Franklin Lakes, NJ) to improve overall laboratory systems and services in African countries severely affected by HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB). This five-year public-private collaboration will focus on five primary areas: developing country-specific programs with integrated laboratory systems; training healthcare personnel; implementing quality-control and quality-assurance guidelines; strengthening TB reference sites to serve as centralized training facilities; and improving access to TB diagnostics for HIV-positive patients.