Leading Chemical Weapons Preparedness Companies Announce Partnership to Deploy Break-through Diagnostic Test Internationally

THE HAGUE, November 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

ProQares - a leading provider of testing, evaluation and certification services for protective equipment against chemical hazards - announced today a partnership with U.S.-based Rapid Pathogen Screening, Inc. (RPS®) - a leading developer of point-of-care diagnostic tests, to deploy ChemTox™ in numerous countries throughout the European and Asia Pacific regions.  

ChemTox is the first-of-its-kind point-of-care diagnostic test for human exposure to chemical poisons in the blood, including Soman, Sarin, Tabun, and VX, and is capable of detecting low-level chemical nerve agent exposure in 10 minutes or less with only a simple finger-stick blood sample.

"The partnership with RPS complements ProQares' mission to contribute to the protection of humans against toxic threats by providing fast and reliable test results," said Jack van Hoof, Managing Director of ProQares. "Through the partnership, ProQares will support RPS in marketing ChemTox to its worldwide network of government and industrial organizations."

"This partnership will accelerate the deployment of this break-through technology and ensure that governments and other organizations charged with protecting the public from a chemical weapons attack have the most sophisticated tools available," said Robert Van Dine, Chief IP and Government Affairs Officer for RPS.

In June, in his address to the NATO Conference on WMD Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, Ambassador Ahmet Uzümcü, director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), focused NATO on his concern that "the future use of chemical weapons in a conventional military sense is remote. The misuse, on the other hand, of toxic chemicals, especially in an asymmetric sense, appears to be the more likely scenario."

A single chemical attack in an urban commercial or residential setting can result in tens of thousands of people that require immediate diagnosis and treatment. Treatment for chemical weapon nerve agent exposure often is most effective within the first 40 minutes. ChemTox responds to this need by providing a rapid, accurate and cost-effective diagnosis at the point-of-care.

In early 2012, RPS expects to apply the CE mark to ChemTox and begin discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to bring it to market in the United States. The product is not currently CE-marked and is not yet available for sale in the United States.