NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Molecular diagnostics firm Biocartis and Abbott today announced a collaboration to develop and commercialize companion diagnostic tests for use on Biocartis' Idylla system.
Under the terms of the deal, the firms will leverage Biocartis' and Abbott's regulatory, scientific, and commercialization expertise, and in partnership with pharmaceutical companies, they will create biomarker panels for use on Idylla where each biomarker in the panel has known clinical significance.
Idylla is a fully automated sample-in, result-out molecular diagnostics platform and is Biocartis' flagship instrument for in vitro diagnostic use. The company, which has offices in Belgium and Switzerland, has said that it plans to launch Idylla along with a test for BRAF mutations in melanoma and other cancers in Europe in the second half of 2014. Late last year Biocartis raised €30 million ($40.6 million) for the validation of the platform and the development of assays.
Financial terms of today's deal were not disclosed.
In addition to Idylla, Biocartis is developing a multiplex platform for biomarker analysis called Evaluation, and recently announced an agreement with Invetech to support its development and manufacture.