Beckman Coulter and MeMed extend partnership advancing host immune response diagnostics

US-based Beckman Coulter Diagnostics and Israeli firm MeMed have announced expansion of their host immune response diagnostics partnership. Beckman Coulter is now an authorized distributor of the MeMed BV assay, a rapid immunoassay test able to distinguish between bacterial and viral infections, and MeMed Key, a compact immunoassay analyser cleared to run the MeMed BV assay in the United States and Europe.

This new distribution agreement complements the existing joint effort to develop a MeMed BV-based test for Beckman Coulter's family of Access Immunoassay Analysers.

MeMed BV returns results in 15 minutes from serum or whole blood and has >99% negative predictive value (NPV) to rule out bacterial infection. MeMed BV assay supported or altered physician decision-making in 87% of cases, a factor important in the context of symptoms of bacterial and viral infections often being clinically indistinguishable, which creates challenges for physicians when deciding to start treating patients with antibiotics or not.

MeMed BV is a diagnostic test developed to address management of patients with acute infection in different clinical settings, including Emergency Departments. The MeMed BV test uses a machine learning-derived algorithm to integrate measurements of three key host-immune proteins (TRAIL, IP-10, and CRP) into a score indicating the likelihood of bacterial or viral infections. The performance has been validated on the MeMed Key by world class institutions in multi-national blinded validation studies as well as rapidly growing real-world use in the US and EU, altogether in over 20,000 patients. MeMed BV on MeMed Key is US FDA cleared, CE-Marked and approved by the Israeli Ministry of Health.