Detect-Ready assay requires swab DNA and provides results in three hours.

Molecular Detection (MDI) appointed Launch Diagnostics as the exclusive distributor for its Detect-Ready™ MRSA assay in the U.K., France, and Ireland. The agreement coincides with the commercial launch of the kit in the U.K. and Ireland.

In March Molecular Detection signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Inverness Medical’s German subsidiary for the Detect-Ready MRSA assay in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where the kit had also just been launched. The firm says U.S. regulatory clearance for the assay is expected later in 2010.

The Detect-Ready MRSA assay is a qualitative real-time PCR in vitro diagnostic for the direct detection of MRSA nasal colonization. The assay is supplied as a room temperature-stable, off-the-shelf kit that requires only the addition of DNA from the patient sample to the premixed reagents in the reaction tube. Test results are provided in less than three hours, MDI claims. Detect-Ready kits are compatible with multiple real-time PCR platforms currently found in clinical laboratories, including the Roche LightCycler®, Qiagen Rotor-Gene®, and Cepheid SmartCycler®, the firm adds.

The Detect-Ready MRSA kit is the first product in a family of Detect-Ready assays being developed by MDI. The company is also developing kits for the detection of bloodstream MRSA and bloodstream vancomycin-resistant enterococcus infections along with tests to detect C. difficile and cytomegalovirus.

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