NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Enigma Diagnostics, a UK firm currently in liquidation, announced today it is selling intellectual property underlying its point-of-care molecular diagnostics platform.
The technology — which was originally created at the UK Ministry of Defence Science and Technology Laboratory — was developed by Enigma into an easy-to-use molecular diagnostics process which the firm noted has been tested in hospitals in Europe and China with accuracy rates in excess of 90 percent. It has also received £140M million ($174 million) in investments to date.
Enigma's MiniLab molecular diagnostics platform can run a respiratory viral panel that was found in a 2015 evaluation to be easy to use by staff in a UK children's hospital. It has a high positive and negative percent agreement for three targets — influenza A, B and respiratory syncytial virus — compared to a lab-performed Luminex xTAG Respiratory Viral Panel assay.
The platform at that time had a one-hour time-to-results and could run point-of-care, highly multiplexed PCR assays, including larger panels. Its core technology involved single-tube magnetic bead- and fluidic-based nucleic acid sample preparation, an electrically conducting polymer for direct thermal cycling, freeze-dried reagents, and high-resolution melting as the endpoint detection.
The firm had also been developing a bacterial and viral meningitis panel, a carbapenamase-producing organisms panel, and was testing a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis test.
The IP assets are being sold via consulting firm Metis Partners. They include an extensive international patent portfolio, registered trade marks with international coverage, bespoke software, organizational knowledge, registered designs, branded domain names, website content, and goodwill in the Enigma Diagnostics brand and reputation, according to a company statement.
Offers should be submitted directly to Metis Partners by noon on May 11, 2017.