SQI Diagnostics, a life sciences company that develops and commercialises proprietary technologies and products for advanced microarray diagnostics, has entered into a Master Service Agreement to contract with a UK-based company to automate their DNA-based pathogen detection assays.

During the initial phase of this agreement, SQI will be paid to deliver an automated working prototype of one of the customer’s assays, operational on SQI’s sqidlite system. The initial phase is scheduled for completion by mid-September 2014. It is anticipated that other molecular diagnostic tests will be commissioned in a separate agreement following successful implementation of the initial phase.

The first assay being automated is used to identify pathogens in raw milk from dairy cows. Currently, dairy cows are routinely tested for health through a global network of laboratories and when symptoms of bacterial infections appear, pathogens are commonly detected using traditional plate cultures. The new application can be used for much faster and more accurate identification of multiple pathogens simultaneously. The UK-based company is developing additional assays for agriculture, food safety and human pathogen testing, intended to screen high volumes of samples on a regular basis.

“As we’ve explored this opportunity, we’ve been impressed by the compatibility and synergy of our new customer’s high-performance molecular diagnostic technology with our  automated multiplexing assay technologies,” said Andrew Morris, chief executive officer,  of SQI Diagnostics. “Although our automated systems have been developed to run our own protein-based IVD and pharma assays, our technology solution is highly adaptable to other types of tests and this presents a valuable additional market opportunity where our technologies can be applied with the potential for significant test volumes and revenue.”