China Medical Technologies Join Hands with Leica Biosystems for Marketing Automated FISH Kits

China Medical Technologies and Leica Biosystems enter into a sales, research and development collaboration for the development and marketing of automated fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) kits that will be used with Leica BOND systems. CMED will be marketing the FISH kits in China while Leica systems will market it to the rest of the world.

Under the joint venture, CMED and Leica Microsystems will work together to develop the automated FISH solutions for conducting tissue sample tests on HER-2, EGFR and TOP2A on the Leica BOND system. The Leica system is a sophisticated automated staining platform. HER-2, EGFR and TOP2A are basically genes related to targeted cancer therapy drugs used for treating lung, breast and stomach cancer. Automation of these tests in the Leica system will facilitate pathology and service laboratories to conduct diagnostics with high precision and improve quality. Automation of the FISH tests will go a long way in reducing the work load that results from high volumes of test samples. Both the companies have agreed upon conducting further tests in pre-natal and cytology applications. The CEO of CMED, Xiaodong Wu, regarded the collaboration as an important milestone which will increase applications for the FISH tests. He added that the partnership with Leica will throw open doors to global markets for selling the FISH kits. ArndKaldowski, the president of Leica Systems, saw the collaboration as an opportunity for bringing Leica Systems into the Chinese market.