Asuragen, a pharmaceutical services provider and a diagnostic development company, has announced the commercial availability of the ARQ IS Calibrator Panels. Developed in collaboration with an international laboratory group and Novartis, the ARQ IS has been designed to help laboratories standardize on the International Scale (IS) for quantitative measurement of BCR-ABL1. The ARQ IS Calibration panels feature Asuragen’s Armored RNA Quant technology.
In Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, precise molecular monitoring of BCR-ABL1 fusion transcripts stages can be accomplished by reporting the quantitative RT-qPCR (reverse transcription-PCR) results on the standardized IS scale.
Earlier, before the international standard was approved by the WHO, the RT-QPCR can be standardized through an exhaustive process where patient samples were exchanged with a reference laboratory, which was IS standardized. The ARQ IS Calibrator Panels hold the recognition of being the first secondary panels to be calibrated with reference to the International Genetic Reference Panel in order to quantify BCR-ABL1.
The professor of human genetics at University of Southampton’s School of Medicine, Dr Nick Cross expressed his delight at the commercialization of the secondary IS panels, calibrated to WHO’s reference standard by stating that the global availability of the panel will vastly improve the BCR-ABL1 testing standardization along with better care and management provided to Chronic Myeloid Leukemia patients.
Compatible with both laboratory developed tests and commercially available assays, the ARQ IS Calibrator Panels have been evaluated in a trial conducted with clinical centers and IS Reference Laboratories. The study established that the ARQ IS Calibrator Panels have been fabricated keeping the WHO IS reference values in mind and can help in standardizing BCR-ABL1 test results in non IS standardized laboratories. Laboratories can use the panels to compare the results against representative IS percent ratios and accordingly monitor their assays.
Source: http://www.asuragen.com