NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Australian diagnostics and drug firm Agenix today announced a cooperation and cross-licensing deal with Arrayjet to jointly develop a point-of-care testing platform into a multiplex testing and screening system.
The two companies plan to develop a test based on Agenix's flow through DiagnostIQ POCT platform but with the "sensitivity, accuracy, and multiplexing ability of planar microarray technology," they said.
DiagnostIQ is a disposable point-of-care test device, which uses an antibody/antigen printed membrane, a filter device, and an incubation chamber in a flow-through format. The new test being developed will leverage Roslin, Scotland-based Arrayjet's non-contact inkjet microarray printing technology.
Development costs will be paid partially through research grants and access to R&D tax incentives, the two companies said.
"Partnering with Arrayjet is an important step in the development of our DiagnostIQ licensed technology for human health applications," Agenix Chairman and CEO Nick Weston said in a statement. "There is a high unmet medical need for a platform able to do multiplexed affinity-based assays in low-resource or mobile settings."
Arrayjet CEO Iain McWilliam added, "We see the vertical flow, disposable cartridge at the heart of the DiagnostIQ platform as the ideal vehicle for a multiplex diagnostics array. Our eventual aim will be to offer customers an end-to-end process, whereby they can rapidly translate a novel biomarker profile into a diagnostic tool presented on a reformatted version of DiagnostIQ to afford the end user a simple to use, cost effective solution.
Financial and other terms were not disclosed.