Abbott Laboratories and German-based Artus GmbH announced that they have amended an existing agreement to expand Abbott's distribution rights to all of artus' nucleic acid-based diagnostics tests for use on Applied Biosystems instruments that use real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology to amplify, detect and quantify nucleic acid sequences.

Under the agreement, Abbott has acquired rights to additional artus products, including infectious disease tests for hepatitis B virus (HBV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Varicella-Zoster virus (VZV), Parvo B19 virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes simplex virus (HSV) and enterovirus.

These products expand the menu of tests Abbott currently offers on Applied Biosystems instruments, including assays for quantitative HCV and HCV genotyping along with artus' tests for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Chlamydia trachomatis (CT), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Abbott markets these products through an exclusive alliance with Celera Diagnostics.

"As part of our commitment to improve medical care in the area of infectious diseases, we continue to build our growing line of diagnostics tests to help physicians make earlier diagnoses and accurate clinical decisions," said Edward L. Michael, president, Molecular Diagnostics, Abbott Laboratories. "This agreement further expands our offering of infectious disease tests for use on Applied Biosystems platforms, which enable laboratories to perform real-time, fully automated PCR testing."

"Real-time PCR is the major driving technology in molecular diagnostics and artus is well positioned as a manufacturer and supplier of high quality products in this field," said Ulrich Spengler, managing director, artus GmbH. "The collaboration with Abbott will help us to provide laboratories worldwide with real-time PCR kits for infectious disease testing."

Artus GmbH is a biotechnology company based in Hamburg, Germany, with subsidiaries in Malaysia and the United States. artus is specialized in pathogen diagnostics through the use of modern genetic procedures. The main areas of application for these tests are human and veterinary medicine.