company spotlight

Extract from report in the "The Australian Investor"


Anteo Diagnostics Targets Health-Care with Mix&Go

Anteo Diagnostics (ASX: ADO) specialises in the development and commercialisation of proprietary surface coatings for applications in the diagnostics and biotech industries. The Company’s proprietary Mix&Go product has broad applicability and blue sky potential that is gaining significant interest from investors.
With Mix&Go the Company has developed “molecular glues” which are used by the Company’s partners and customers to immobilise delicate biological molecules such as antibodies to synthetic surfaces.

The proven and licensed technology continues to gain significant traction in numerous healthcare markets, including in vitro diagnostics (IVD), life science research (LSR) and point of care (POC) diagnostics.

“Our clear focus at the moment remains Health Care and that is where we are devoting 95 per cent of our energies.

“Essentially what we have is a versatile glue in a Health Care environment,” Anteo Diagnostic’s CEO, Dr Geoff Cumming told The Australian Investor.

“Glues are often used in the development and manufacture of immunoassays and immunoassays represent about 20 per cent of the pathology testing that is done,” he says.

Some are forecasting the IVD market to grow to $60 billion this year, lending particular significance to that 20 per cent.

“It is a market that is showing significant growth. So probably about say $12 billion is the immunoassay market alone.”

IVDs are diagnostic tests performed outside the body in a test tube (in vitro). Examples of IVD tests are blood tests for glucose, liver enzymes, levels of electrolytes such as calcium, sodium, and potassium, tests for drugs and immunoassays.

“A very wide array of commonly performed pathology tests are immunoassays, which could benefit from either a reduced cost of goods or improved sensitivity as a result of using Mix&Go.”

How does it improve testing?

As a product, Mix&Go has a convincing value proposition. Mix&Go’s surface coating not only enables the development of technically superior – more sensitive and reproducible – assays but simpler and faster manufacturing significantly reduces cost-of-goods.

In addition, faster assay development enables Mix&Go users to bring more assays to market faster and to offer their products at competitive prices.

“Our improvements are made before a diagnostic tool reaches the pathology lab so our technology is integrated into in the development and the manufacture of the tests that are performed in the pathology lab,” he says.

“Conventionally antibodies are bound to a solid phase. That binding process denatures and therefore renders inactive about 80 per cent of the antibody. With Mix&Go about 80 per cent of the antibody remains active.

“Therefore if there is a clinical benefit in developing a test with greater sensitivity… we can get many-fold improvement in sensitivity,” he says.

“If however the existing pathology test immunoassay has sufficient sensitivity then we can allow that test to be manufactured with as little as 90 per cent of the antibody that is currently used.

“Antibodies are typically the most expensive component of the test, and therefore, we can significantly reduce the cost of goods for the manufacture of those assays.”

When asked about the level of cost reduction, Dr Cumming said that depending on the cost of the antibody, “in-house costings indicated Mix&Go could cut about 30 per cent out of a test that, say, costs in the region of 10 cents per test ”.
To read the complete ADO article please click here: http://www.theaustralianinvestor.com.au/linkt.aspx?id=621