--A contract to Abbott Laboratories is planned to purchase Cystic Fibrosis Reagents to support the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's (AFIP) mission.

A contract to Abbott Laboratories is planned to purchase Cystic Fibrosis Reagents for use on the Applied Biosystems 3100 instrument. These reagents are only available from Abbott Diagnostics. The AFIP Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory uses these reage nts to perform testing for Cystic Fibrosis from either blood or purified DNA. Although there are several alternatives to the Abbott Diagnostics system on the market, this one is the only one that can be performed on the 3100 instrument. Secondary testing i s performed on this instrument using reagents supplied by Abbott Diagnostics. Furthermore, since this assay is PCR-based, the system can be performed on DNA of lower quality, enabling better reproducibility on older smaples or samples that may not have bee n stored properly. Inquires must be directed to [email protected]. Telephone inquiries will not be honored.