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Cepheid Announces Symposium Speakers and Program Highlights for 19th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 06:00 CDT

Test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) Expected to Highlight Broad On-Demand CE IVD Test Menu at Booth #611

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD) today announced speaker and program highlights for its symposium, "Patient Management in the Era of Rapid Diagnostics," which the company will host at the 19th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), taking place in Finland next month. The company also announced the menu of CE IVD molecular diagnostic tests to be featured in booth #611 on the exhibition floor.

Dr. Fred Tenover, Ph.D., Cepheid's Senior Director of Scientific Affairs, will chair the symposium where leading microbiology and infection control specialists will present data on the clinical impact of rapid, on-demand molecular diagnostic testing.

The Cepheid Symposium, "Patient Management in the Era of Rapid Diagnostics," will take place at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, 17 May in Hall 3F. The agenda is as follows:

"The 19th ECCMID Congress is shaping up to be extremely interesting in light of recent UK directives from the Department of Health concerning mandatory MRSA screening for all elective admissions and other developments in infection control across Europe," said Dr. David Persing, M.D., Ph.D., Cepheid's Chief Medical and Technology Officer. "Additionally, we expect to showcase our Xpert(R) MTB/RIF test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis - a product that, in my opinion, is one of the most important diagnostic developments to have occurred in many years."

Xpert MTB/RIF not only detects the presence of TB organism directly from sputum in less than two hours, but also identifies whether the strain is resistant to rifampicin, a commonly used first-line drug for treatment of the disease. Many studies have shown that rifampicin resistance is a reliable surrogate marker of strains that are multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and the frequency of MDR-TB is increasing in the EU. The test is expected to enable clinicians to dramatically improve the way they initially manage tuberculosis by helping them to make the right therapeutic decision on the first day of the initial patient encounter.

Cepheid currently offers European clinicians a broad menu of on-demand molecular diagnostic tests designed to enhance patient management. The full menu of CE IVD tests expected to be available for demonstration at booth #611 include:

• Xpert(R) MTB/RIF
  • Diagnostic test for the simultaneous detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and resistance to rifampicin
• Xpert(R) C. difficile
  • Diagnostic test for Clostridium difficile infection
• Xpert(R) vanA/vanB
  • Detection of vanA and vanB, the genes most associated with hospital-acquired vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)
• Xpert(R) MRSA
  • Surveillance test for nasal carriage of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus
• Xpert(R) MRSA/SA BC
  • Diagnostic test for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S. aureus in positive blood culture bottles
• Xpert(R) MRSA/SA Nasal
  • Pre-Surgical Nasal Screening Test for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S. aureus
• Xpert(R) MRSA/SA SSTI
  • Diagnostic test for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S. aureus in skin and soft tissue
• Xpert(R) EV
  • Diagnostic test for Enteroviral Meningitis
• Xpert(R) GBS
  • Test for vaginal carriage of Group B Streptococcus
• Xpert(R) BCR-ABL Monitor
  • Monitoring test for patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML)

Congress attendees can also look forward to a wide variety of insightful presentations, based on recent studies, highlighting the important role of molecular diagnostics. Presentations include:

• Dr. Beryl Oppenheim, Director of Infection Prevention and Control, Birmingham City Hospital: Comparison of the performance of four rapid tests against the gold standards of cytotoxicity assay and culture in the diagnosis of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI)
• Dr. Kathleen Bamford, Reader and Honorary Consultant Medical Microbiologist, Imperial College, London: Evaluation of commercial toxin detection and two nucleic acid amplification tests for the routine detection of Clostridium difficile infection
• Dr. Andrej Weintraub, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm: Comparison of a multiplex real-time PCR and the cytotoxicity neutralization assay for the diagnosis of Clostridium difficile infections
• Dr. Jim Gray, Senior Microbiologist, Birmingham Children's Hospital: Experience with polymerase chain reaction-based methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus screening in paediatrics
• Dr. Paolo Cavallerio, Ospedale Molinette, Torino, Italy: Molecular assay for the rapid screening of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) colonized patients in an Intensive Care Unit
• Dr. Martin Jones, Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA: Rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin-resistance from sputum samples with an easy-to-use PCR test system with near-patient capability

About Cepheid

Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is a molecular diagnostics company that develops, manufactures, and markets fully-integrated systems and tests for genetic analysis in the clinical, industrial and biothreat markets. The company's systems enable rapid, sophisticated genetic testing for organisms and genetic-based diseases by automating otherwise complex manual laboratory procedures. The company's easy-to-use systems integrate a number of complicated and time-intensive steps, including sample preparation, DNA amplification and detection, which enable the analysis of complex biological samples in its proprietary test cartridges. Through its strong molecular biology capabilities, the company is focusing on those applications where rapid molecular testing is particularly important, such as identifying infectious disease and cancer in the clinical market; food, agricultural, and environmental testing in the industrial market; and identifying bio-terrorism agents in the biothreat market. See www.cepheid.com for more information.

SOURCE Cepheid

Source: PR Newswire

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