Lab21, a Cambridge based global specialist in personalised medicine and clinical diagnostics, has acquired technology from the US that will allow it to produce assays faster against targets in areas such as oncology and infectious diseases.

The UK company announces completion of a worldwide licence from Cooperative Diagnostics in South Carolina to use its suite of patents and expertise for the development of its growing pipeline of molecular diagnostic  kits. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Lab21 says that Cooperative Diagnostics has undertaken completely innovative approaches to develop novel molecular technologies using biophysical models and statistical bioinformatics and has successfully commercialised a series of assays in the infectious disease area to demonstrate the capability of their technology.

Graham Mullis, CEO at Lab21 said: “Lab21 has established a global business in immunodiagnostic assays. The company is also developing a pipeline of nucleic-acid tests.

“The Cooperative Diagnostics technologies bring powerful new tools to our development capability including fifth generation real-time PCR technology and we expect to launch our first CE marked companion diagnostic assays using this technology during the first half of 2012.

“These tests will be commercialised through our international distribution networks and particularly through our key global OEM partners.”

Dr Berwyn Clarke, CSO at Lab21 added: “As part of this agreement we have exclusive use of this technology on a set of defined biomarker targets particularly in the oncology and infectious disease areas.

“Preliminary work has shown that assay development times can be reduced significantly and that performance is often better in terms of existing gold standards of sensitivity and specificity.

“We expect the technology to deliver a substantial number of new assays in the first 12 months and will be of significant interest to pharmaceutical companies needing to fast track companion diagnostic development.”

Lab21 is a global leader in personalised healthcare. It provides diagnostic products and services and supports blood bank screening, medical diagnostics and drug discovery.

Lab21 customers include international healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies. The Products division manufactures immunodiagnostic kits and reagents that are distributed internationally and is focused on infectious diseases for the blood-banking and clinical markets.

Its clinical services operations have a growing test portfolio providing companion diagnostics and high technology molecular assays. Lab21's corporate offices are based in Cambridge, UK and Greenville, South Carolina, with a GMP manufacturing site in Cambridge and other UK manufacturing facilities in Newmarket, Camberley, Manchester and Bridport.