GE Healthcare in deal with Merck & Co

UK-based GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of the USA's General Electric, has signed a non-exclusive agreement with US drug major Merck & Co to share technology on imaging of the lungs that may help to advance respiratory treatment development. Under terms of the deal, Merck will be granted access to Spin Signal Technology (SST) utilizing hyperpolarized Xenon 129 gas, a molecular imaging agent that is under investigation by GE Healthcare to provide high speed, quantitative imaging of the lung using magnetic resonance imaging. The latter originally licensed this technology from Princeton University of the USA.

This technology is being evaluated to determine if it can provide more sensitive information than currently-available tests on how diseased lungs function, by using xenon, a gas that can be modified with the SST to be detectable with MRI. With this technology, MRI delivers images that may provide clinical value by allowing regional imaging of disease, says the UK firm. This information could enhance that provided by FEV1, the volume exhaled during the first second of a forced expiratory maneuver, it adds.