Shares soar after diagnostics firm says handheld device could be ready in weeks
Shares in a Manchester molecular testing business have soared by more than 250% in morning trading on news it is close to producing a hand-held device to test for coronavirus.
AIM-listed near patient molecular diagnostics company Genedrive announced today that, with a rapid global shift of healthcare emphasis towards testing and treatment of COVID-19, it has refocused a significant part of its core resources towards development of two SARS-COV-2 tests.
The company’s first assay, already in development, is an instrument-agnostic molecular assay – the Genedrive 96 SARS-COV-2 test – that can be performed on a variety of high throughput molecular testing platforms already installed in many laboratories around the world.
The test will determine if a patient has an active infection. The company anticipates that a clinically-validated high throughput test format could be available in approximately eight weeks.
The test is designed as a one-step, ready-to-go freeze-dried assay.
Based on discussions with sizeable third party suppliers, the company expects it could have the ability to ramp quickly to high production volumes of more than 10,000 tests per hour, and, thus, this could be both a material revenue generator for the company and significant contributor to addressing the global pandemic.
Freeze-dried assays require no refrigeration and are stable in transport, which is a significant logistical advantage for rapid shipment and global distribution.
A second test will also be developed by the company where it will adapt its formulations to run on the Genedrive instrument platform to provide a rapid point-of-care SARS-COV-2 test to allow testing outside of the main hospital environment in places such as clinics, intensive care units, or where rapid and accurate testing for SARS-COV-2 might be required.
The rationale for the two-stage development is that the testing, logistics, validation, and trial work to provide testing on a turnkey instrument system like Genedrive takes additional time, compared with an agnostic assay format.
The company believes that the principal risks on SARS-COV-2 assays development are related to business continuity and supply chain robustness for raw materials in the market, as opposed to technical challenges.
Genedrive is also actively seeking development partners, distributors and non-dilutive funding to support the most rapid development possible.
David Budd, Genedrive chief executive, said: “It is a critical time for our industry’s expertise to contribute towards testing and treatment of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our novel experience in developing molecular assays, the rapid workflows we can achieve with Genedrive compared to centralised testing, and our scaleable manufacturing capability give the company an opportunity to contribute very significantly to the global crisis.”
By mid-day today its shares had risen by 255.56% to 32p per share. By the close of trading they had improved by 311.11%, at 37p per share.
