LBT Innovations gets $1m milestone payment

LBT Innovations (ASX:LBT) has secured the third of four $1 million milestone payments for the development of its Automated Plate Assessment System (APAS).

LBT’s 50:50 joint venture company Clever Culture Systems (CCS) has received the payout from Hettich AG Switzerland, the JV’s co-owner.

The funds will be used to prepare new commercial software modules for Australian and US clinical trials of the system scheduled to commence later this year.

Hettich AG has now paid $5 million of the $6 million it committed towards the development of the system when the two companies signed their JV agreement in June last year. The final $1 million milestone payment is expected in the second half of the calendar year.

Following the trials, CCS plans to apply for regulatory approval by the US FDA. The company is in talks with several possible distribution partners and aims to launch APAS into global markets in late 2015.

With a commercial launch inching closer, LBT’s scientific director John Gibson presented the results of prior clinical studies using APAS at last month’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Barcelona.

During a trial which compared the screening of hundreds of clinical samples by APAS and by a team of experienced microbiologists, APAS agreed with the experts’ findings without missing a single potential pathogen.

LBT Innovations (ASX:LBT) shares were trading unchanged at $0.16 as of around 2.30 pm on Thursday.