24th Feb 2014 09:57
LONDON (Alliance News) - Shares in Omega Diagnostics Group PLC rose Monday after it announced that it had been granted a USD600,000 grant from Burnet Institute Melbourne and global health initiative UNITAID to build an assembly facility in India for its Visitect CD4 test.
Shares in Omega were trading up 14% at 30.85 pence Monday morning.
The Burnet Institute was awarded a USD1.6 million UNITAID grant to initiate field evaluations in India and South Africa. Omega is working as a partner with Burnet on this project. UNITAID is a global health charity largely supported by a levy on airline tickets and administered by the World Health Organization.
Visitect CD4 is a disposable, semi-quantitative rapid test for the determination of CD4 counts in whole blood. CD4+ T-cells are destroyed by the HIV virus, so monitoring their count is important for the management of HIV patients being treated by antiretroviral drug therapies.
In a separate statement Omega said Monday that it had made progress in its programme to launch a panel of 40 allergy tests on Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings PLC's IDS-iSYS automated analyser. IDS-iSYS is used to detect particular substances in samples to aid diagnosis or monitor a disease.
Omega is developing products for use with the system through a distribution agreement with Immunodiagnostic.
The company confirmed it had completed claim-support work with the first group of seven allergens to be tested with the analyser. A further 11 allergens have completed optimisation, Omega said, and would now move to the claim support stage. And another further 11 allergens are now undergoing optimisation tests.
This progress has given Omega confidence it can commercialise its launch panel for the ISD-iSYS platform, the company said.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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