Thermo Fisher Scientific Presents a Range of New Technology

This year at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s (AACC’s) annual meeting, Thermo Fisher Scientific presented its range of Thermo Scientific specialty diagnostics products. The company highlighted certain of its products that recently received regulatory approval across the globe.

“Healthcare professionals increasingly rely on new diagnostic tools to provide the information they need to make critical decisions involving patient care,” said Marc N. Casper, president and CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Our growing offering of specialty diagnostics enables physicians to make faster, more accurate diagnoses with the goal of improving patient outcomes.”

Thermo Fisher announced that its new QMS Tacrolimus immunoassay has been CE marked for sale in the European Union. Immunoassays are biochemical tests that analyze the concentration of a particular substance (analyte) in a solution often made up of a complex mixture of substances. The liquid, ready-to-use immunoassay provides bar-coded reagents to run on the Indiko bench-top chemistry analyzer. The product is not yet available for sale in the United States.

The company also introduced a new generation of its Indiko platform, the Indiko Plus analyzer. Featuring the same compact design as its predecessor, the Indiko Plus analyzer is designed to deliver higher throughput for routine clinical research applications, including drugs-of-abuse testing and therapeutic drug monitoring.

In addition, Thermo Fisher introduced immunoassay and chemistry controls said to improve clinical laboratory workflow by concentrating the number of analytes in a single vial. The new MAS Omni-CORE control consolidates general chemistry and serum protein quality control (QC) processing into a single solution that offers different levels of testing to streamline the workflow and reduce cost. The company’s new MAS Omni-Immune immunoassay control consolidates routine immunoassay, tumor marker and specialty immunoassay QC processing.

Thermo Fisher continues to expand its capabilities in the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases by introducing several new assays at AACC. The EliA Rheumatoid Factor Assays, cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2011, provides clinicians with a reliable and simple tool to aid in the early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, ImmunoCAP Tryptase Assay, cleared by the FDA in Febuary 2012, measures levels of a specific enzyme in serum or plasma to provides an earlier indication of systemic mastocytosis, a rare blood disorder caused by too many mast cells.

Thermo Fisher Scientifics is a manufacturer headquartered in Waltham, Mass. Its three main brands are Thermo Scientific, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services.