Bluechiip secures supply deal with US CRO

Tracking chip technology developer Bluechiip (ASX:BCT) has forged a strategic partnership with US CRO Gentris Corporation.

Bluechiip has agreed to provide Gentris with its eponymous temperature sensing and tracking chips, which are initially being developed for cryogenic sample management.

Gentris provides outsourced pharmacogenomics and biorepository services for clinical trials and genomic biomarker programs, and will use bluechiips to add temperature tracking services to its portfolio.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Bluechiip said Gentris has also signed up to its Early Adopter Program, which involves purchasing the trial-stage Bluechiip product.

Bluechiips' main claimed advantage over sample tracking methods such as labels, barcodes and RFID is the ability to withstand extreme temperatures, making them suitable for use in cryogenically stored samples. The chips can also be read wirelessly without requiring a visible tag or line-of-sight.

Gentris chief scientific officer, L. Scott Clark, said the ability to track individual samples' temperatures was also a key draw.

“The ability to understand sample-level temperature changes and trends in temperature across sample collections throughout the process chain and specimen lifecycle over time will be extremely valuable,” he said.

Bluechiip went public with an IPO in June last year, raising funds to help commercialise the tracking chips. The company has already secured a deal to provide its chips for the Australian Synchrotron.

Bluechiip (ASX:BCT) shares climbed 6.67% to $0.240 on Tuesday, the day the Gentris partnership was announced, and were trading unchanged as of 3:30pm on Wednesday.