LGC licenses first T5000 Biosensor System in Europe - and announces development agreement with Abbott

LGC, the international science-based service company, has concluded an agreement with Abbott, a global healthcare company, to be the first diagnostics service provider in Europe to license the Ibis T5000 Biosensor System, for use in the rapid identification and characterisation of genomic material from microorganisms.

Under the terms of the agreement, LGC and Abbott will jointly identify and develop commercial diagnostic applications for the T5000 Biosensor System, which is currently used for research purposes. LGC will have an exclusive license to develop non-clinical applications in the UK and a non-exclusive license to develop clinical and food testing applications.

The T5000 Biosensor System is an automated platform for the rapid identification and characterisation of microorganisms. The platform technology for the system is based on a cutting-edge combination of PCR and high performance mass spectrometry. In combination with Abbott’s bespoke database of thousands of microorganisms, the Ibis T5000 is capable of identifying virtually all bacteria, viruses and fungi, and can provide information about drug resistance, virulence and strain type of these pathogens.

Current applications for the Ibis T5000 Biosensor System include epidemiologic surveillance, monitoring of pandemic diseases, identification of emerging or previously unknown pathogens, forensic characterization of human samples, identification of sources of hospital-associated infections, and, in the future, human infectious disease diagnostics. Abbott acquired Ibis Biosciences, Inc. from Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in January 2009.

An LGC microbial identification diagnostics service built around the T5000 Biosensor System is planned. The T5000 Biosensor System has already been deployed and endorsed by a number of US agencies involved in pathogen and infection control.

Dr Paul Debenham, Director of Innovation and Development at LGC, commented: “LGC is delighted to be working closely with Abbott to offer services built on this technology. LGC already offers a wide spectrum of analytical diagnostics services and we are looking forward to identifying possible new application areas for this exciting new platform”.