Singapore: QIAGEN announced an agreement with Lepu Medical Technology, Beijing, a leading medical device company in China, to provide QIAGEN's ESEQuant Lateral Flow System for use in emergency rooms with Lepu's tests for cardiac markers that diagnose acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). The agreement expands QIAGEN's presence in China and adds a new point of need diagnostics application.

China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) has approved the ESEQuant Lateral Flow detection system with Lepu Medical's five cardiac marker tests. Lepu will market the system in China under the name LEPU Quant-Gold. Globally, this is the first regulatory approval in human healthcare for QIAGEN's pioneering ESEQuant platform which was acquired in 2010.

"We are very pleased to begin this relationship with the Lepu Group and meet a pressing need for heart patients by combining ESEQuant's quick turnaround time with the reliability of Lepu's tests for cardiac biomarkers," said Dr Frank Krieg-Schneider, head, global strategic alliances and OEM, QIAGEN.

"This agreement advances two strategic initiatives. First, our geographic presence is further broadened by the addition of important point of need assays in China. China represents QIAGEN's third-largest country in sales. Secondly, we are driving platform success by launching ESEQuant as an SFDA-approved device in a lifesaving medical application, a milestone for our emerging Point of Need portfolio."

The agreement with Lepu Medical begins with shipment of 750 ESEQuant systems for China and is expected to grow. Currently, ambulance personnel take samples to test for cardiac markers, and upon arrival at the hospital these are sent to a laboratory causing a delay of an hour or more. QIAGEN's ESEQuant platform will run Lepu's tests to measure key cardiac markers immediately after the ambulance arrives at the emergency room, allowing accurate diagnosis within minutes at the point-of-care.