OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN, &ldquo, OpGen&rdquo, or &ldquo, the Company&rdquo, ))), a precision medicine company harnessing the power of molecular diagnostics and bioinformatics to help combat infectious disease, today announced that the Company has received confirmation from FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, that several key milestones under its collaboration agreement with the global non-profit organization have been successfully met as of the end of 2022. This achievement has triggered an undisclosed milestone payment per the terms of the agreement.
The completed milestone included several key deliverables: successful demonstration of DNA isolation on the Unyvero A30 cartridge from representative bacterial strains in various types of blood culture bottles with subsequent PCR; successful demonstration of several 3-plex assays from the intended panel on the A30 cartridge with both pathogen detection as well as AMR markers; and a detailed set of product requirements for the target product profile, including a list of analytes to be detected which has been defined. OpGen’s subsidiary Curetis furthermore provided a report including results from its internal database analysis looking at genetic diversity and resistance profiles in pathogens observed in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Also, a device specification for a prototype cockpit optimized for use with the A30 platform has been defined and agreed upon.
Andreas Boos, Chief Technology Officer of Curetis and program head for the Unyvero A30 platform development commented, “We are excited about the progress that we have achieved in a few short months since the start of our collaboration with FIND and believe we are on track to achieve the remaining milestones and complete the deliverables under this pilot project as planned until the second quarter of this year.”
Johannes Bacher, Chief Operating Officer of OpGen added that, “given the outstanding results and progress made to date we look forward to a broader and expanded collaboration with FIND once the remaining milestones have been demonstrated. Such a next phase collaboration could include clinical studies as well as projects toward certain regulatory filings in various LMICs.”
Cecilia Ferreyra, Director, FIND AMR Programme remarked that, “the R&D team at OpGen’s subsidiary Curetis has worked to achieve important progress in a short period of time. We are looking forward to seeing and evaluating this molecular point of care test in the coming months as we continue working with the team to evaluate the potential of Unyvero A30 to help identify blood stream infections in patients admitted in LMICs hospitals.”
