Stratagene Licenses Full Velocity™ Technology for Infectious Disease Testing

Focus Diagnostics have entered into a collaborative agreement with Stratagene Corporation whereby Focus will develop and commercialize infectious disease molecular products, supplied by Stratagene, for the clinical IVD market worldwide. Under the terms of the agreement Stratagene has agreed to license its Full Velocity™ nucleic acid amplification technology and associated know-how to Focus for the development of molecular diagnostic products.

Stratagene will manufacture and supply diagnostic products for Focus to commercialize worldwide and will also supply reagents for Focus to perform molecular diagnostic testing services in its reference laboratory.

FullVelocity technology is a proprietary, high-speed reagent system for quantitative PCR and QRT-PCR that delivers sensitive, specific and reproducible results with significantly shorter run times than competing technology. The FullVelocity technology enables users to make numerous copies of a target, accurately and quickly to detect the presence of specific DNA and RNA in medical specimens. The technology can be used to identify infectious diseases, cancer, genetic diseases, and drug sensitivities. Stratagene has five U.S. issued patents on the technology with additional patents pending.

Even though the molecular diagnostics segment currently accounts for only 5% of the IVD market, it is expected to grow rapidly as a result of increasing investment by the IVD industry in this area. By 2010 revenues in the molecular diagnostics market are expected to reach $3.7 billion, representing an annual growth rate in excess of 20%. Infectious disease testing makes up the largest and fastest growing segment of the nucleic acid testing (NAT) market. Current tests are primarily for the detection of HIV, HBV, HCV and sexually transmitted diseases. Other segments of the molecular diagnostic market include oncology, cardiovascular, identity testing and prenatal screening.