Acrongenomics and Molecular Vision on Track to Meet Targets for BioLED Technology

Acrongenomics, Inc. and Molecular Vision, Ltd. - an Imperial Innovations spin-out company - have presented an R&D update of their joint collaboration, following the meeting of the project's steering committee, that took place on 28th July 2006 at Molecular Vision's site in London.

The two companies envisage accelerating the development and commercialization of readily portable Point-of-Care (POC) diagnostic devices.

Initial devices will enable personalized on-the-spot monitoring for diabetes management and diagnosis of STDs, cardiovascular diseases and substances of abuse, based on the unique BioLED technology platform.

Molecular Vision has been recently transferred its facilities to the new Imperial Bio-Incubator Centre at Imperial College London.

Molecular Vision has established all relevant administration procedures at its new site, and has appointed two full time principal scientists to the project, with respective expertise in microfluidics and OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes).

The company is seeking to recruit three more people by the end of September, including a microfluidic assay scientist, a microfluidic clinical technician and a device fabrication engineer.

Currently, the two companies are making good progress in the development of the generic BioLED platform.

The first phase of this work is aimed at developing POC prototypes for diabetes management and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.

In the past two months a modeling software system for BioLED technology has been developed in order to identify the optimal configuration for high sensitivity detection.

The present steps include the development of appropriate devices, OLEDs, PDs (Photodetectors) and filters, allowing the detection of reference analytes already existing in the market at the sub-micromolar level. The first photodetector demonstration is planned for the end of March 2007.

In parallel, studies for the development and fabrication of microfluidic structures for handling blood will take place.

We envision the completion of the first phase of these studies towards the end of December 2006.

This partnership between Acrongenomics and Molecular Vision will offer a range of POC applications to the medical diagnostics sector.