artus is awarded the worldwide broad license for PCR

artus GmbH have announced its entry into a license agreement with the Swiss pharmaceutical company F. Hoffmann-La Roche for the commercial use of PCR. By acquiring this 'broad license', the Hamburg biotechnology company is authorized to manufacture and market a wide PCR product range in the future. Thus making the company one of the largest worldwide providers for licensed real-time PCR assays.

This license authorises artus to manufacture and market its RealArt™ PCR assays which are developed for human in vitro diagnostics. The main areas of application for the PCR products are the detection of infectious diseases, genetics, oncology, tissue typing and therapeutic drug monitoring fields. artus now belongs to a select group of companies that can offer customers worldwide within diagnostic laboratories, hospitals and universities a broad range of licensed PCR kits.

PCR is expected to be the most important in-vitro diagnostic method of the near future. Up to now only five companies (Abbott, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, ABI, Altana) besides F. Hoffmann-La Roche held the broad license for the commercial use of PCR.

From December 2003, all companies producing and distributing in-vitro-diagnostics in the EU have to comply with the IVD guideline by the EU on in-vitro-diagnostics. 'artus has already labelled 25 of its RealArt™ PCR Kits with the CE-mark within the time-frame and more assays will be CE-marked soon', said Dr. Ulrich Spengler, managing director, artus GmbH.

In 2002, artus GmbH was already awarded three worldwide licenses for the commercial use of the PCR for the detection of herpes viruses as well as pathogens relevant to veterinary and tropical medicine.