NEW YORK – UK-based technology development company RNAssist said this week that it has licensed its VivoPhix biomolecule stabilization technology to Quality Control for Molecular Diagnostics (QCMD).
QCMD provides and manages external quality assessment and proficiency testing solutions — primarily focused on the infectious disease lab market — covering regulatory and educational proficiency testing requirements to support lab accreditation to ISO15189 or other equivalents. The company said it is planning to use the VivoPhix technology to develop new reagents that can be used with its own molecular infectious disease proficiency testing solutions.
Financial terms of the licensing deal were not disclosed.
RNAssist noted it plans to commercialize VivoPhix as a research-use-only reagent in the near future, and is exploring granting exclusive licenses for a broad range of commercial applications, including scRNA-seq; scDNA-seq; metagenomics; multi-omic research; diagnosis of human, animal, and plant diseases; vaccine development; food safety monitoring; virus and bacterial inactivation; and tissue fixation and staining.
"This license agreement strengthens the existing relationship between RNAssist and QCMD in the area of sample stabilization technologies," RNAssist CFO Malcolm Bates said in a statement. "It shows our focus on establishing partnerships to maximize the potential of our technologies for a wide array of applications."
On Wednesday, Rapid Labs announced that it had acquired the worldwide rights to manufacture and supply VivoPhix as well as RNAssist's GenoPhix sample preparation product. GenoPhix is also designed for biomolecule stabilization, tissue fixation, and microbial inactivation for a range of applications including RNA sequencing, single-cell DNA sequencing, metagenomics, and sample staining.