Eurofins tasked with streamlining disease testing by US kidney transplant group
The screening will be carried out by Eurofins’ subsidiary Viracor-IBT, which the contractor acquired in 2014 to expand its range of biomarker analysis capabilities and further engage with the biopharmaceutical and hospital sectors.
Under the agreement, Viracor-IBT will perform infectious disease screening at 75 NKR member centres. NKR said Viracor-IBT will help reduce kidney exchange or "swap" failures and increase the number of patients transplanted.
NKR founder Garet Hill said: “Infectious disease screening is a critical part of the paired exchange process. These tests need to be fast and accurate; otherwise swaps can be delayed, or worse, cancelled.
“Through our partnership with Viracor-IBT we further streamline the pre-op serology testing process, reducing the turnaround for these tests to under two days from as much as 10 days, while providing secure electronic transmission of the results."
This was echoed by Julie Kliegl, president of Viracor-IBT who added "as a laboratory committed to providing test results faster when it matters most, Viracor-IBT is thrilled to partner with the NKR on this critical program that accelerates donor-recipient matching and increases living donor transplantation."
From a business perspective, the agreement further underlines Eurofins growing focus on the human diagnostics sector.
Since buying Viracor-IBT, Eurofins has made a number of other purchases in the analysis space – Emory Genetics Laboratory, Biomnis and Diatherix Laboratories. The contract services firm has also invested €150m investment in lab group BioAccess.
