Cardiac And Pregnancy Assays Are Being Tested For Emergency Room Use.

2001 MAY 17 -- (NewsRx Network) -- Quantech Ltd. (QQQQ) announced May 2, 2001, that Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation (MMRF) has begun clinical studies of the Quantech FasTraQ[TM] instrument system and PrePaQ[TM] cardiac and pregnancy test cartridges in preparation for submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The FasTraQ system is designed to enable Emergency Department personnel to generate time-critical diagnostic test results on site in 10 to 15 minutes, rather than having to go through the more time-consuming process of sending test samples to the hospital's laboratory.

The MMRF, which oversees research at Hennepin County Medical Center, will use two of Quantech's PrePaQ test cartridges in the studies - one containing a panel of the cardiac-marker tests, Myoglobin, CK-MB, and Troponin-I, and one containing hCG, a test for the quantitative determination of pregnancy. Two blood samples will be drawn from each patient tested, with one sample going to the hospital laboratory and the other tested in the FasTraQ system. The results will then be compared in a statistical analysis.

"We expect the clinical studies to confirm that the FasTraQ system can provide emergency personnel with the results of time-critical cardiac tests in less than 10 minutes - a savings in time that can be of critical importance in diagnosing suspected heart attacks," said Robert Case, Quantech. "Pregnancy tests ...