Virco Lab, Inc a leader in HIV resistance testing services, announced a US collaboration with SmartGene, Inc a provider of novel services for the management and analysis of genetic data to provide laboratories and physicians with greater insight into HIV drug resistance and to transfer the ordering, viewing and storage of HIV resistance reports to an innovative secure Web-based system.

The agreement, allows laboratories and physicians to order, view and store Virco HIV resistance reports through the SmartGene HIV Web-service module. As a result, data from resistance tests can be stored indefinitely and accessed easily through the Internet. Using the integrated system, laboratories can interpret HIV sequences using multiple algorithms, reinterpret sequences to build cumulative resistance reports for patients and create fully searchable databases for clinical, research and epidemiological purposes. Currently when a clinician orders a resistance test to help guide the selection of a new treatment regimen, previously conducted resistance tests are often unavailable or are difficult to retrieve.

"We believe that our collaboration with SmartGene, Inc. will enable laboratories which use both of our services to provide additional value to HIV clinicians by offering richer information from HIV genetic sequencing," said Werner Verbiest, general manager Worldwide of Virco BVBA. "The sequence management services provided by SmartGene along with our own vircoTYPE HIV-1 resistance reports allow the laboratory to exquisitely manage genetic information and to electronically order and deliver customized reports to the end user via this synergy in our services."

Virco BVBA is a world leader in the field of HIV resistance testing services for clinical practice and clinical studies, advancing research that correlates laboratory testing with clinical management, while offering a wide range of HIV resistance diagnostics.