NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Genedrive announced today that it and two of its collaborators have been awarded a grant worth roughly £600,000 ($795,253) to develop a disposable centrifuge-free plasma separation consumable device.
Genedrive said that it would receive £484,000 of the funding — which is being provided by Innovate UK — with the remainder going to NHS Tayside and the University of Dundee. With the grant, the partners aim to develop the plasma separation device that can be used with Genedrive's hepatitis C virus assay — a recently CE-IVD marked test that runs on the firm's PCR-based Genedrive portable diagnostic instrument.
"This device will aim to improve the applicability of the Genedrive HCV assay for closer-to-patient settings and would be a significant step forward in positioning the test for true decentralized diagnostics," Genedrive CEO David Budd said in a statement. "Further, the device is anticipated to be independent from the Genedrive platform, opening the opportunity for other diagnostic instruments that need plasma as a starting point for blood-borne viral testing."