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Tangen Biosciences, LabWare Partner on Point-of-Care Coronavirus Kit

NEW YORK — Tangen Biosciences said on Friday that it has signed an exclusive agreement under which its GeneSpark point-of-care instrument will be distributed as part of LabWare's portable disease surveillance kit for SARS-CoV-2.

According to Tangen, the suitcase-sized kit includes a mobile hot spot and a tablet computer connected to a cloud-based laboratory information management system (LIMS) software portal. The kit is designed to help gather patient demographic and clinical information, document field collection of respiratory swabs for SARS-CoV-2 testing, accession samples, and disseminate data to public health agencies.

The addition of the GeneSpark molecular diagnostic instrument will allow high-priority patient specimens to be tested immediately, with patient details and test results transferred to public health labs and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via LabWare's LIMS in under 30 minutes.

Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Branford, Connecticut-based Tangen, which last month received a $696,000 contract from the US Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to develop a GeneSpark-based point-of-care test for SARS-CoV-2, said it is also developing a combination SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A and B panel that is expected to offered by LabWare.

"We believe the combined COVID-19 and Flu A/B test will be a critical surveillance tool for respiratory illness management," Tangen President and CEO Richard Birkmeyer said in a statement. "In addition to the COVID-19 test, we are also developing a sepsis panel and an antimicrobial-resistant panel, and we are currently looking for strategic partners for both projects."

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