BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Grifols, a
global healthcare company and biopharmaceutical manufacturer based
in Barcelona, Spain has entered into a long-term cooperative
agreement with the diagnostics business of Novartis for the
commercialization of select Grifols’ diagnostic products in the US.
Under the terms of the agreement, Novartis will market and
distribute Grifols’ immunohematology instruments, assays and other
products following US regulatory approvals. The agreement
also covers semi-automated pre-transfusion diagnostic products made
by Grifols subsidiaries as well as Progenika blood group antigen
genotyping products currently distributed by Grifols.
“Grifols’ seventy year history of advancing blood diagnostics
complements the Novartis leadership in blood safety and ongoing
mission to advance preventive screening,” said Oriol Dunach, the
head of Diagnostic Grifols. “Our commercialization agreement
with Novartis will serve to enhance transfusion safety throughout
the US by providing laboratories with the latest technologies and
highest quality services,” continued Dunach.
Novartis is a trusted name in transfusion medicine that will
help strengthen Grifols’ position in the US blood transfusion
market. Novartis Diagnostics’ highly sensitive tests and
fully automated nucleic acid testing platforms, developed in
partnership with Gen-Probe, are used to test millions of blood
donations around the world each year for HIV, Hepatitis, and West
Nile Virus. Today, more than eighty percent of the US blood
supply is tested on Novartis systems. The commercialization
agreement with Grifols will add immunohematology instruments to the
portfolio of products Novartis Diagnostics can make available to
blood banks and hospital transfusion centers.
This agreement leverages an earlier Grifols’ distribution
agreement with Spanish biotechnology company Progenika Biopharma
for its microchip blood
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