Diagnostic Companies Strike Global Deals

Diagnostics companies have been busy in recent months striking deals to distribute their tests or joint venture with other companies that can broaden their global reach. Here are some highlights of recent agreements that involve diagnostic testing technology:

EUROPE

• Finnish molecular diagnostics company Mobidiag tabbed Italian firm YouMed to sell and market its polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based Amplidiag platform and menu of in vitro gastrointestinal bacterial, viral and parasitic tests in the UK. Mobidiag also has distribution deals for Scandinavia, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe.

• The Food and Drug Administration granted 510(k) clearance and a CLIA waiver to a respiratory panel from BioFire Diagnostics, the molecular biology affiliate of French-based biotech giant BioMérieux. The FilmArray Respiratory Panel EZ, which detects 11 viruses and three bacterial pathogens from nasopharyngeal swabs, will be available exclusively in the U.S. starting in November.

ASIA

• Utah-based nonprofit Intermountain Healthcare signed a distribution deal giving Prisma Biotech the right to sell its ICG100 next-generation tumor sequencing test in Taiwan. Intermountain concluded a similar deal with Singapore-based Asia Genomics covering Southeast Asia a month earlier.

• Canadian company Ventripoint Diagnostics raised $600,000 via a private placement of 4 million shares of its newly launched Chinese joint venture. The new firm, Shanghai YuTian, will sell Ventripoint’s unique system for using conventional 2D echocardiography to measure functional and volumetric aspect of all four heart chambers to hospitals in China.

LATIN AMERICA

• Novacyt inked a three-year deal allowing Cepheid to distribute its complete HPV diagnostic system on a non-exclusive basis in 18 countries across Latin America, a region with one of the world’s highest incidence rates for cervical cancer.

• MDxHealth gave Uruguay-based biotech firm SouthGenetics rights to distribute its SelectMDx for Prostate Cancer test in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.