New Automated Immunosuppressive Drug Assays Improve Therapeutic Drug Monitoring For Transplant Patients

Roche enables immunosuppressive drug assays to be consolidated onto main laboratory automated platforms

For the first time, certain immunosuppressive drug (ISD) assays can now be performed automatically on cobas modular platforms, allowing laboratories to consolidate testing for a wide range of transplant testing/monitoring assays onto a single platform. The new Roche automated assays for tacrolimus and cyclosporine will enhance therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of transplant recipients by providing the consistency and accuracy of an automated assay, while enhancing workflows, auditing and reporting capabilities in the laboratory.

Tacrolimus and cyclosporine are important ISDs used in the maintenance therapy of transplant recipients. Due to the significant pharmacokinetic variability between patients for these drugs, TDM and concentration controlled dosing are used to tailor therapy for individual patients, ensuring the ideal balance between efficacy and toxicity.   It is therefore paramount that tests used to monitor transplant patient’s response to therapy exhibit high quality performance and are efficient to run.

The new Roche tacrolimus and cyclosporine assays will provide state-of-the-art performance with the proven Elecsys electrochemiluminescence (ECL) technology for reliable and trusted results. The tests can be performed on any of the cobas modular platforms, including the cobas 4000 and cobas 6000 analyser series or the high volume cobas 8000 modular analyser series, allowing a wide range of assays to be performed on a single analytical platform for increased laboratory efficiency. This includes serology assays, allowing clinicians to test donors and recipients for important infectious diseases, and organ function tests to monitor the health and recovery of transplant patients. Fully automated laboratories can also benefit from Roche pre- and post- analytical solutions for rapid and convenient sample preparation, storage and retrieval. 

About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, infectious diseases, inflammation, metabolism and neuroscience. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. Roche’s personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2012 Roche had over 82,000 employees worldwide and invested over 8 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 45.5 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, in the United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche is the majority shareholder in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information, visit www.roche.com or www.roche.co.uk.