Calypte Biomedical Corporation has signed a sublicense agreement with Abbott Laboratories Inc for certain worldwide rights to patents relating to the design, manufacture and sale of lateral-flow rapid diagnostic tests.
Under the terms of the agreement, Calypte was granted certain worldwide rights to use a family of patents known as the "Guire/Swanson" patents. The technology underlying these patents is fundamental to all lateral-flow rapid diagnostic tests, an official statement said.
"We are pleased to have received a license to the Guire/Swanson patents from Abbott," Dr. Richard George, CEO of Calypte said adding, "The technology covered by these patents is critical to the design of lateral-flow rapid tests. We believe it is one of the essential licenses that will provide us the freedom to manufacture and sell our emerging HIV rapid diagnostic tests in the U.S. and around the world."
Included in the major themes of this year's recently completed XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand were the availability of low cost anti-retroviral drugs and the focus on efforts to identify those people infected with HIV more quickly and enrol them in therapy.
Calypte plans to offer a menu of tests providing the HIV testing community with the opportunity to choose from a complete line of rapid tests that can be used to test urine, oral fluid, and blood. Initial evaluations of Calypte's rapid tests in Thailand show that all three tests were successfully proven to be safe, efficacious and accurate. All three assays are being moved into manufacturing sequentially. The technology transfer for the blood rapid test to Calypte's Thailand manufacturer is underway, with the objective of completing first pilot production later this third quarter, the release added.
A May 2004 report by the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GBC), based on their own estimates and that of the World Health Organization (WHO), disclosed that less than 10 per cent of infected individuals in the developing world know their HIV status. According to the report, new infections are on the rise, and only 400,000 of the 6 million people in need of antiretroviral therapy have access to these life saving medicines. Testing for HIV serves as an entry point for both prevention and treatment. The objective of treating 3,000,000 people by the end of 2005, the stated goal of the WHO "3 by 5" Initiative, would require that 500,000 people will need to be tested each day, the release says.