Panbio announces alliance with Adaltis

Diagnostics company Panbio has announced a strategic alliance with Canadian-based medical diagnostics instrumentation group Adaltis to develop automated diagnostic products.

Panbio CEO Jim Porter said the alliance had been driven by the move toward automation by the clinical laboratory market.

"Being aligned with a company that has this technology makes sense on a lot of fronts," he said. "It's a very natural synergy ... its a good fit for us, and for our customers."

The initial focus will be to integrate Panbio's West Nile and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) range of ELISA diagnostic products with Adaltis laboratory instrumentation. According to Porter, it should be a relatively simple process to automate the tests using Adaltis's open source platform. The integrated products will then be targeted at the US market.

Panbio's West Nile virus diagnostic test is the only FDA-approved test available for the mosquito-borne disease, which has been rapidly spreading across the US. A big market also exists for EBV testing, with over US$20 million worth of EBV diagnostics sold every year in the US alone.

"Within 30 days we should be able to offer these products to the US market," Porter said. Once the first two automated products were on the market, the companies would begin to evaluate other products from the Panbio range, he said.