18 Feb Third Wave Broadens Market, Releases Genetic Technology to Early Adopters
Madison, Wis. — Third Wave Technologies Inc. announced Tuesday that its genetic analysis Invader technology platform has been successfully extended to chromosomal analysis, opening a new market to the company.
In conjunction with this important extension of the Invader technology, Madison-based Third Wave also announced it is providing Invader analyte-specific reagents (ASRs) for prenatal chromosomal analysis to the University of California, Los Angeles, Calif. and other leading institutions under an early adopter program. Customers in this program can use Invader ASRs as components of laboratory-developed tests for the detection of trisomy, or three copies rather than the normal two, of chromosomes 13, 18 and 21, and aneuploidy, too many or too few, of chromosomes X and Y. Third Wave intends to broadly launch Invader ASRs for chromosomal analysis during the fourth quarter of 2004.
“We believe that Third Wave’s novel approach to chromosomal enumeration offers distinct advantages over current technologies. As an early adopter of this innovative tool, we feel that we have placed ourselves in a position of leadership within this field,”
said Nagesh Rao, director of the Clinical and Molecular Cytogenetics Laboratories at UCLA.
The Invader platform is designed to present objective information regarding important differences observed in an entire chromosome, as well as differences in very small sections of a chromosome. Third Wave’s approach to chromosomal analysis reduces turnaround time to hours, as compared to traditional techniques like karyotyping and fluorescence in situ hybridization where results are usually require days to generate.