IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDXX) today announced that the IDEXX Catalyst SDMA Test will be commercially available to all North American customers on January 16, 2018, enabling IDEXX’s point-of-care customers to add SDMA as an essential element of the routine chemistry panel.
As part of IDEXX’s launch ramp of this advanced kidney test for the point of care, more than 2,731 preorders for the 12-test box of the Catalyst SDMA Test have already been shipped to IDEXX customers, and another 1,762 existing preorders are expected to be shipped this week.
The Catalyst SDMA Test has been in use in hundreds of practices across the United States since December, advancing veterinary healthcare and patient outcomes. The Catalyst SDMA Test can be added to any chemistry panel on IDEXX’s Catalyst One and Catalyst Dx chemistry analyzers as part of the patient sample run, with the full chemistry panel results, including SDMA, available within minutes.
IDEXX expects to bring the Catalyst SDMA Test to customers beyond the U.S. and Canada over the course of the next several months. There are currently more than 28,000 Catalyst One and Catalyst Dx analyzers in use in veterinary practices worldwide.
Additionally, to further explore SDMA’s potential applications to human health, IDEXX has signed a collaboration agreement with Yale University. As part of this partnership with a world-leading human nephrology research organization, the IDEXX SDMA Test was validated for accuracy in measuring SDMA in human blood samples, and the results were presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology last November by Yale and IDEXX researchers. Future research with Yale will focus on the clinical utility of SDMA in human patients using the validated IDEXX SDMA Test.
IDEXX first launched the IDEXX SDMA Test at its reference laboratories in 2015, and has run more than 12 million SDMA patient tests, creating the world’s largest database on kidney disease in dogs and cats. The IDEXX SDMA Test is a kidney test proven to identify kidney disease earlier than creatinine, enabling veterinarians to intervene earlier to meaningfully impact a patient’s health outcomes and quality of life. Whether the kidney condition is chronic, acute, or a secondary consequence of other common diseases found in veterinary medicine, SDMA provides the unique opportunity to gain important insight into the health of sick or seemingly healthy patients alike—and take action earlier.
“We’ve seen great enthusiasm for the ability to run SDMA as part of the routine chemistry panel at the point of care, and preorders have exceeded our expectations,” said Jonathan Ayers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IDEXX Laboratories. “The IDEXX SDMA Test represents one of the most significant diagnostic innovations in veterinary medicine in the last 30 years. We’re thrilled to bring this essential element of the chemistry panel to our point of care IDEXX VetLab suite, allowing veterinarians to utilize the benefits of SDMA immediately during the pet’s appointment.
“SDMA has tremendous potential benefit in human applications as well,” Ayers continued. “And with the IDEXX test technology now validated to be able to run on commercial chemistry systems that routinely produce chemistry results in human reference laboratories, we have greater reason to explore the clinical value of this incredible biomarker in human applications. We are excited and grateful for our partnership with Yale University.”
SDMA is the subject of more than 30 ongoing research collaborations and has been incorporated into the veterinary profession’s International Renal Interest Society (IRIS) kidney disease staging guidelines. This underscores IDEXX’s leadership in the renal market in the veterinary field and shows that the IDEXX SDMA Test is becoming commonly appreciated as an essential element of the routine chemistry panel.
For more information about the IDEXX Catalyst SDMA Test, visit www.idexx.com/catalystsdma.
