Roche and Response Biomedical Corporation aim to reduce "vein-to-brain" time with new point-of-care cardiac tests

Roche Diagnostics and Response Biomedical have entered into a partnership that will allow Roche to market the first line of cardiovascular tests for Response Biomedical’s new point-of-care platform.

The platform, the RAMP^® 200 (Rapid Analyte Measurement Platform), is based on RAMP technology that is already used in laboratories worldwide for West Nile Virus, biodefense tests and the recently FDA-cleared RAMP Flu A/B Test.

The RAMP cardiovascular product line includes Troponin-I, CK-MB, Myoglobin and NT-proBNP. Roche has exclusive rights to market the cardiovascular line in the United States, Canada and other global markets.

“Having the test menu at the patient’s bedside may provide physicians with the improved ‘vein-to-brain’ time that is often critical when treating patients with potentially life-threatening cardiovascular conditions,” said Rodney Cotton, Senior Vice President of Roche Diagnostics’ Point of Care division. “The RAMP 200 will allow physicians to treat patients faster because it can help reduce the amount of time from when a patient presents with symptoms to when treatment begins.”

The RAMP 200 cardiovascular line is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2009. The test system uses whole blood and can perform 18 to 36 tests per hour. Up to six tests of all one type or a mixture of tests may be run simultaneously. Results appear in as little as 15 minutes.

The RAMP cardiac tests are simple to use and may be placed in a variety of hospital locations, which provides the hospital with more staffing flexibility, and reduces potential delays due to sample transportation and processing.

Guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association require or recommend a patient presenting with a potential AMI (acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack) be diagnosed within 60 minutes, and preferably within 30 minutes.

“One of the advantages of this system for critical care is that all of the RAMP cardiac tests correlate to the same tests on larger analyzers in the lab, such as the cobas 6000 series,” said Ken Levy, Director of Strategic Business Development for Roche Diagnostics’ Point of Care division. “This way, physicians can be confident that the results they get in the ER and in the lab are consistent, so they can provide better treatment to the patient.”