Corgenix Medical Corporation and AspirinWorks, today announced that together they have entered into a license agreement with McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, providing Corgenix and CCC exclusive rights to the propriety technology owned by McMaster for the development, manufacturing and marketing of innovative diagnostic tests specific to the pathway by which aspirin acts on platelets.
This technology has demonstrated the ability to assess an individual's relative risk for heart attack by measuring the person's degree of aspirin resistance.
The technology involves the measurement of a unique thromboxane metabolite, which removes the guesswork, allowing physicians to quantify the amount of the metabolite involved in aspirin resistance. Qualitative platelet function tests currently available are subject to multiple interferences. Once a physician measures a patient's response to aspirin, the dosage can be adjusted or alternative platelet therapy recommended.
Mamdouh Shoukri, Vice-President (Research and International Affairs) at McMaster University, said, "McMaster has long been committed not only to develop technology beneficial to the healthcare system, but to collaborate with outstanding commercial partners like Corgenix and AspirinWorks to ensure that our technology actually gets to the public. This technology for aspirin resistance, developed in our Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, is a ground-breaking discovery in the prevention of cardiovascular disease."
"Part of our mission as an academic teaching hospital is to advance health care through education and research," said Bill MacLeod, Vice-President, Research and Corporate Development at Hamilton Health Sciences. "This collaboration with our academic partner, McMaster University, is another example of how we are working together to move important clinical research out of the lab to make a difference to people and their health."