LUXEMBOURG & MELBOURNE, Australia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Advanced Biological Laboratories S.A (ABL) today announced the acquisition of all the assets of Evivar Medical Pty Ltd (Evivar), which includes Evivar’s Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and C (HCV) web-based decision support tools for clinicians and the associated viral genome analysis systems (SeqHepB and SeqHepC), intellectual property portfolio, and all related commercial arrangements and operations.
"Our acquisition of Evivar Medical assets will add value and allows ABL to further expand its Virology portfolio from HIV to include Hepatitis disease management. The interface between TherapyEdge®, ViroScore®, DeepChek® and the SeqHepB/C systems is an important milestone for ABL's platform that enables clinicians to manage complex treatment and diagnostics decisions, optimize and provide individualized care," said Dr. Chalom Sayada, President and CEO of ABL. "Evivar’s expertise in disease management platform for Hepatitis B and C is a complementary addition to ABL’s infectious diseases management technologies and builds on our commitment to deliver innovative, best-in-class tools.” ABL will leverage its experience in HIV disease management and expand into the field of viral hepatitis.
Mr. Bernie Romanin, CEO of Evivar Medical, stated, “We are excited about this transaction because the combined platforms builds on both companies’ technological strengths to further enhance disease management tools for major viral infections including complex management of co-infected individuals.” Evivar has partnered with an extensive range of companies worldwide including the largest National Reference Laboratories in the US, Global Diagnostics Companies and specialty Hepatitis clinical centres.
The SeqHepB system was originally developed at the Melbourne Health laboratory of Professor Stephen Locarnini (Australia), a world-renowned expert in Hepatitis B and antiviral resistance. Professor Locarnini collaborated with numerous liver disease experts in Australia (Southern Health, St. Vincent's Hospital, Alfred Health, Sydney South West Area Health Service, and Austin Health) and internationally in Madrid (Fundación Investigación y Educación en SIDA), Germany (Verein Der Freunde Der Molekularen Gastroenterologie Und Hepatologie) and Netherlands (Rotterdam; E.V, Stichting Leveronderzoek).
Professor Locarnini stated, “I believe that the knowledge we have built over the years in the treatment of HBV and HCV infections can be enhanced by the use of the ABL programs, especially in contributing to the understanding of the potential clinical impact of very low levels of viral mutations.” The Evivar SeqHepB and SeqHepC systems provide accurate and timely therapy management for Hepatitis B and C viral infections and can be used to identify mutations present in the infected persons, including predicting resistance levels to commercially available drugs.
About ABL, S.A.: Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL), S.A., is
a biotech company founded in 2000 as a spin-off from the European
academic research center, CRP-Santé Luxembourg and in 2004, acquired the
control of TherapyEdge, Inc. TherapyEdge is a biotech company spin-off
from Triangle Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which was acquired by Gilead
Sciences. ABL has a comprehensive suite of healthcare management tools,
including TherapyEdge®, ViroScore®, DeepChek® and VisibleChek®, which
are used for data and patient management, monitoring and personalized
reporting applications. In 2012, ABL’s products received CE-marking for
In-Vitro Diagnostic use. ABL’s products offer infectious disease
clinicians and virology laboratories optimal and efficient IT solutions,
including powerful fully integrated databases and analysis systems
combining standard and high-throughput Next Generation Sequencing data.
The clinical and biological outcomes aid in the generation of clinically
meaningful genotyping reports for personalized healthcare.
http://www.ablsa.com
About Evivar Medical: Evivar was a joint venture company established in February 2006 to provide accurate and timely therapy management for Hepatitis B & C patients, respectively through its SeqHepB and SeqhepC programmes (web-based decision support tools) to assist physicians to optimise and individualise the treatment schedule of patients with chronic hepatitis. The Company provides commercial therapy management services to chronically infected Hepatitis B patients. Evivar was also the exclusive licensee of intellectual property and know-how relating to methods for detecting drug resistance to Hepatitis B and C and variants of Hepatitis B and C. http://www.evivar.com
About HIV: HIV continues to be a major global public health issue; there are approximately 33.4 million people currently living with HIV/AIDS. In 2011, more than 10 million people worldwide living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART); however, HIV drug resistance to ART remains a serious concern. Therefore, there is a desperate need to understand how the virus develops resistance to drugs, and to use this understanding to develop more effective strategies for treating HIV infections.
About HBV: HBV is one of the top 10 causes of mortality globally. There are an estimated 350 million individuals worldwide who suffer from chronic Hepatitis B (CHB) with an estimated 7 million people becoming chronically infected each year with no cure for CHB.
About HCV: There are 180 million HCV infected people worldwide. New direct acting antiviral agents for the treatment of HCV have become available in recent years. The ABL and Evivar HCV clinical management tools are designed to assist clinicians and virologists in making the optimal choice of combination therapy and diagnostic monitoring.
