Unyts provides blood components to eight counties in Western New York, supplying approximately 5,000 platelet and 11,000 plasma units per year.
"Since adding community blood banking services in 2007, Unyts has continuously strived to find ways to utilize the latest innovative technologies to improve safety and availability," said Mark Simon, Unyts President and CEO.
"The INTERCEPT blood system will provide a proactive approach to addressing the safety of our platelet and plasma recipients by protecting these patients from transfusion transmitted bacteria and emerging pathogens."
"We are pleased to add Unyts to our growing list of customers in the US," commented William "Obi" Greenman, Cerus’ president and chief executive officer. "Unyts can now offer its hospitals state of the art platelet and plasma components processed with the INTERCEPT system."
Headquartered in downtown Buffalo and established in 1981, Unyts is among the leading procurement organizations in the United States, and is one of the only a few centers nationwide that offers organ, tissue and eye procurement, in addition to a community blood service.
Cerus is a biomedical products company focused in the field of blood safety. The INTERCEPT Blood System is designed to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted infections by inactivating a broad range of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria and parasites that may be present in donated blood.
The nucleic acid targeting mechanism of action of the INTERCEPT treatment is designed to inactivate established transfusion threats, such as Hepatitis B and C, HIV, West Nile Virus and bacteria, as well as emerging pathogens such as chikungunya, malaria and dengue.
