American life sciences firm Revvity has launched its in-vitro diagnostic EURORealTime APOE assay – used to help assess the safety of Alzheimer’s treatment – in European countries that accept the CE mark.
The assay is used to enable accurate genotyping of the APOE gene; a process which is valuable in assessing a patient’s risk for side effects prior to the start of an anti-amyloid (beta) therapy in Alzheimer’s disease.
The real-time EURORealTime APOE PCR test allows simultaneous detection of the three most frequent APOE forms, designated E2, E3 and E4. Carriers of exclusively E4 exhibit the highest risk for ARIA under therapy.
With the new test now available from Revvity’s EUROIMMUN, only one reaction is required using genomic DNA isolated from a single blood sample to determine the patient’s APOE genotype.
Dr. Lars Komorowski, chief scientific officer of EUROIMMUN, said: “With the introduction of new disease-modifying drugs for treating Alzheimer’s, a new era of therapy has begun for this incurable disease. However, it has been found that patients taking these treatments with a certain form of the APOE gene have a significant risk for developing potentially life-threatening side effects, called ARIA, referring to edema or microbleedings in the brain.
“Being able to easily determine the APOE genotype of patients before starting therapy is key to assessing the individual risk for potential negative consequences.”
With 2023 revenue of more than US$2.7bn and over 11,000 employees, Revvity serves customers across pharmaceutical and biotech, diagnostic labs, academia and governments.
It is part of the S&P 500 index and has customers in more than 190 countries.
