Netherlands-based Qiagen has commercially introduced QuantiFERON Monitor (QFM), a diagnostic for monitoring immune function.
QFM has been developed to monitor immune function in solid organ transplant recipients.
Qiagen CEO Peer Schatz said: "We are very pleased to add QuantiFERON Monitor to our portfolio of diagnostic tools for transplant care and to expand our line of highly accurate tests using QuantiFERON technology.
"We believe QFM has the potential to address a large unmet medical need among the 100,000 organ transplant patients a year."
QFM is also available for research use as an accurate marker of immune function in studies of immunosuppressive conditions, immune modulating therapies and recovery following transplantation, in North America and other markets.
According to the company, QFM evaluates the cell-mediated immune response, as well as provides crucial information on the strength of the immune system in the immunosuppressed solid organ transplant population.
QFM is said to use a combination of stimulants, which specifically target different cell types involved in both the innate and adaptive immune systems to detect cell-mediated immune response, and provide qualitative and quantitative measurement of cell-mediated immune function.
The monitor can also be used for application in monitoring immune response for other conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, HIV, cancer and immunotherapy.
Qiagen noted that its line of in-vitro diagnostics uses clinically established interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA) technology to detect cell-mediated immune responses from whole blood samples.