IDEXX Laboratories Inc. announced that its Catalyst SDMA test will be commercially available to all North American customers on Jan. 16, enabling IDEXX's point-of-care customers to add SDMA as an essential element of the routine chemistry panel.
The Catalyst SDMA test can be added to any chemistry panel on IDEXX's Catalyst One and Catalyst Dx chemistry analyzers as part of the patient sample run, with the full chemistry panel results, including SDMA, available within minutes.
The company expects to bring the Catalyst SDMA test to customers beyond the U.S. and Canada over the course of the next several months.
Additionally, to further explore SDMA's potential applications to human health, the company has signed a collaboration agreement with Yale University. As part of this partnership, the IDEXX SDMA test was validated for accuracy in measuring SDMA in human blood samples, and the results were presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology last November by Yale and IDEXX researchers. Future research with Yale will focus on the clinical utility of SDMA in human patients using the validated IDEXX SDMA Test.
IDEXX first launched the IDEXX SDMA test at its reference laboratories in 2015, and has run more than 12 million SDMA patient tests, creating the world's largest database on kidney disease in dogs and cats, according to the compay. The IDEXX SDMA Test is a kidney test proven to identify kidney disease earlier than creatinine, enabling veterinarians to intervene earlier to meaningfully impact a patient's health outcomes and quality of life, IDEXX stated.
"We've seen great enthusiasm for the ability to run SDMA as part of the routine chemistry panel at the point of care, and preorders have exceeded our expectations," said Jonathan Ayers, IDEXX Laboratories' chairman and CEO. "The IDEXX SDMA test represents one of the most significant diagnostic innovations in veterinary medicine in the last 30 years. We're thrilled to bring this essential element of the chemistry panel to our point of care IDEXX VetLab suite, allowing veterinarians to utilize the benefits of SDMA immediately during the pet's appointment.
"SDMA has tremendous potential benefit in human applications as well," he added. "And with the IDEXX test technology now validated to be able to run on commercial chemistry systems that routinely produce chemistry results in human reference laboratories, we have greater reason to explore the clinical value of this incredible biomarker in human applications. We are excited and grateful for our partnership with Yale University."
SDMA is the subject of more than 30 ongoing research collaborations and has been incorporated into the veterinary profession's International Renal Interest Society kidney disease staging guidelines.
For more information about the IDEXX Catalyst SDMA test, visit idexx.com/catalystsdma.
