NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) –One BioMed and A*Star’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) said on Monday that they have established a joint laboratory to develop molecular diagnostic assays for the Asian clinical infectious disease testing market.
The joint laboratory will focus on the development and integration of initial assays for One BioMed's platform.
One BioMed, recently spun out of A*Star’s Institute of Microelectronics, is developing a point-of-care diagnostic platform that employs two technologies — chemistry-based nucleic acid extraction and silicon biophotonics dual-ring sensing.
A*Star noted that this approach will enable simple, cost-effective, rapid, and highly multiplexed molecular testing outside a central laboratory, when the two technologies are integrated into a consumable cartridge and run on a portable instrument.
Each panel that the team develops will be highly multiplexed and syndromic, addressing clinically important infectious diseases in Asia, including pediatric respiratory infections, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and mosquito-borne illnesses, A*Star said.
“We allied with the GIS Translational Research group because they combine extensive molecular diagnostics assay development expertise with regulatory and commercialization experience,” Park Mi Kyoung, founder of One BioMed, said in a statement.
Ng Huck Hui, executive director of GIS, said that its collaboration with One BioMed helps it address "one of the most difficult problems facing patients and healthcare providers across the region — poor access to accurate testing for infectious diseases like influenza, dengue, and tuberculosis."
A*Star noted that the laboratory will be in the Genome building at Biopolis, an international research and development center for biomedical sciences in Singapore, and it will leverage the deep genomic expertise of GIS to improve the delivery of clinical medicine.