Lumora Ltd, Headquartered in Ely, Cambridgeshire, and 3M headquartered in St Paul, Minnesota, USA have signed a Joint Development and Licensing Agreement.
A recognised leader in research and development, 3M produces thousands of innovative products for diverse markets such as display & graphics, electronics & communications, manufacturing & industry, safety & security, office supplies, health care and home & leisure industries. Conclusion of the Agreement enables 3M to develop and sell nucleic acid test kits utilising Lumora’s groundbreaking BART technology.
Lumora specialises in the development of robust, affordable and easy-to use molecular diagnostics systems based on its proprietary 'BART' technology. The company was founded in 2002 as a spin-out from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge, and now employs 13 people with a wide range of experience and operates from a dedicated, 6,100 sq ft facility. The scientific team of nine includes four senior post-docs as well as IVD industry experienced process development staff. Capabilities include bioinformatics, primer design, test optimisation, test evaluation, protocol optimisation, reagent stabilisation and scale-up guidance. Lumora has microbiology experts in-house and facilities to deal with many common pathogens.
Lumora is seeking further collaborative development and licensing partnerships to bring its core technology to market in industrial sectors and clinical in vitro diagnostic applications. For parties interested in learning more about opportunities to license BART for molecular diagnostics, Lumora will be presenting on future applications of the technology at two forthcoming conferences:
1. Dr Laurence Tisi, CEO, will speak on the digital applications of BART, at the Quality Control for Molecular Diagnostics (QCMD) conference in Glasgow, Scotland during September 2011
2. Paul Weinberger, CMO, will present opportunities for BART in clinical diagnostics at the AdvaMed 2011 MedTech conference in Washington during September 2011
About BART
BART (Bioluminescent Assay in Real-Time) is a novel reporter system, exclusive to Lumora, which is designed to be used with isothermal nucleic acid amplification technologies - primarily as a tool in molecular diagnostics. The simplicity of BART enables simple, affordable, robust hardware to be used. This is a major break-through as molecular diagnostics is typically associated with complex and expensive hardware.
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