Mayne first to offer Medsaic's DotScan as leukaemia test

Mayne Pathology (ASX:MAY) has agreed to provide Sydney-based Medsaic's DotScan test for leukaemia and lymphoma in four states in Australia, with an official launch of the technology at Mayne Health Laverty Pathology in Sydney today.

Mayne will also provide the test at QML Pathology in Queensland, Dorevitch Pathology in Victoria and Western Diagnostic Pathology in Western Australia.

"It's an important event for us, to have our first customer over the line, and a customer with the calibre of Mayne," said Medsaic's CEO Jeremy Chrisp.

Medsaic -- a spin-off from the University of Sydney -- placed its first-generation scanner and test kits with Mayne Health in November 2002, said Chrisp.

"We've worked closely with them since then, in terms of getting evaluation and helping us with the development and proving that the technology was good," he said.

While DotScan has also been tested at other pilot sites, such as Westmead Hospital, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas, Chrisp said that: "Mayne has been a stellar performer from our point of view, so it's been a tremendous partnership."

Medsaic's DotScan has been assigned a Medicare rebate item number. Chrisp said that the list price for kits is AUD$125, but patients would then pay labour and other costs on top of that, with approximately $256 being Medicare-rebated.

"For high volume accounts [such as Mayne], there's no capital cost, its part of the attraction," said Chrisp. "They'll use it when it's appropriate, and they'll have it as routine in their laboratories at the discretion of their haematologist."

Open for business

From here, Medsaic is looking for other customers. "We're starting a campaign to advise a lot of people really that we're now ready, that we've now got the technology and that it's ready for sale," said Chrisp.

The company is also looking to roll out new applications of the platform technology, in areas such as solid tissue tumours and autoimmune disease.

"We're going to introduce this at a number of locations as fast as we can for leukaemia, and then roll out second and third applications on the same platform, and obviously we'll go global as well," said Chrisp.

How Dotscan works

DotScan uses a nitrocellulose coated microscope slide on which 82 different antibody dots are printed, specific for 82 leukaemia cell surface antigens. A suspension of cells, either from blood, bone marrow or lymph nodes, from a patient suspected to have leukaemia are dropped onto the array and incubated.

Different types of leukaemia exhibit different assortments of characteristic surface antigens. If a cell expresses a particular antigen, it will latch on to the corresponding antibody, which is anchored on a dot on the slide.

The Medsaic scanner then quantifies the intensity of the dots and converts them into a digital image. The resulting dot pattern can be analysed and compared to that of known leukaemia types.

The main tool in diagnosis of leukaemia and many other conditions is currently flow cytometry. Using fluorescently labelled probes (often antibodies) and laser technology to detect cell surface antigens the technique requires expensive reagents, highly experienced staff, and a relatively large amount of antibody. It also generally detects only 10 to 20 different cell surface antigens.

Chrisp said he did not see DotScan as a replacement for flow cytometry, though.

"It's complementary to flow cytometry. For clinics that don't have flow [cytometry] it's an ideal low-cost equivalent. For practical reasons, flow [cytometry] can't cover the number of antigens we assess on one chip, but we don't do minimal residual disease at the moment," he said.