At the recent ASM meeting in Florida, AdvanDx showed EVIGENE™ kits for detecting specific antibiotic resistance, virulence, and toxicity markers such as methicillin-resistance, vancomycin-resistance, PVL and TSST-1 in Staphylococcus aureusand enterococci, these were launched for research use only in the United States.

EVIGENE was officially launched for clinical use in Europe in April, 2006 at the 16th European Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) conference in Nice, France.

EVIGENE kits can be used for epidemiological purposes and help guide infection control measures to prevent serious infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria such as MRSA, VRE and VRSA. The tools will also help US researchers develop the means by which to combat the high-profile, community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) which is causing serious infections in otherwise healthy adults and children.

Dr. Henrik Stender, Vice President for Research & Development and co-founder of AdvanDx said "We are very pleased to offer the new EVIGENE™ platform for rapid characterization of gene markers in pathogens. Whereas our PNA FISH™ products provide rapid speciation, EVIGENE provides a further characterization and classification of the more pathogenic strains. We hope that this information is useful to researchers in the US, and to clinical providers in Europe."

EVIGENE is a qualitative hybridization assay based on nucleic acid signal amplification that provides rapid (3 hrs.) detection of specific gene markers in S. aureusand enterococci isolates.