Collaboration for aspirin resistance testing announced

A license agreement signed Monday will give U.S.-based companies Corgenix and Aspirin Works exclusive rights to the proprietary 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.

“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,” says Mamdouh Shoukri, vice-president research and international affairs at McMaster. “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.”

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.

“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.”

Jack Hirsh, professor emeritus of medicine at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster, one of the co-developers of the aspirin resistance technology, co-authored a 2002 study which demonstrated that patients taking aspirin with high levels of thromboxane in their urine had a risk of cardiovascular-related death that was 3.5 times as great as those on aspirin with the expected low therapeutic levels. “While medications to lower hypertension and cholesterol are tested through measurement of blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels, aspirin has not been routinely monitored to see if it is truly protecting a patient against heart attack or stroke,” said Hirsh. “Patients should be tested for aspirin resistance so we can determine if the aspirin is working and if it's not, increase the dosage and retest, or choose another anti-platelet therapy.”

Gordon Ens, president of Corgenix said, “23 million Americans are taking an aspirin a day as a preventative measure against a heart attack. However, recent reports indicate that up to 25 per cent of these individuals may be non-responsive to aspirin's benefits because they are aspirin resistant or the aspirin dosage they are taking is not effective. More startling is that patients who are aspirin resistant are also more than three times likely to die from heart disease, as reported by several recent studies.”

Atherothrombosis is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 52 per cent of all deaths. An estimated 56 million people worldwide died from atherothrombotic disease in 2000 (manifested as cardiovascular disease, ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease). Atherothrombosis is also the leading cause of death in the US, in 1999 responsible for almost one million deaths and a contributing factor in 70 per cent of all deaths. According to the most recent Centers for Disease Control computations, the probability at birth of eventually dying from major cardiovascular diseases is 47 per cent, whereas the chance of dying from cancer is 22 per cent.

Doug Simpson, president of Corgenix stated, “Corgenix is obviously very pleased to be collaborating with these two outstanding partners. McMaster University is acknowledged as a leader in many areas of clinical medicine and is particularly recognized in the field of hemostasis and coagulation. Their faculty is first-rate, and as a result, important leading-edge technology has been developed over the years. We expect that this relationship, in conjunction with Creative Clinical Concepts, will result in some very exciting new products which address this very important and growing market.”

Corgenix Medical Corporation and AspirinWorks, a division of Creative Clinical Concepts, Inc., are headquartered in Denver, Colorado.