| Back to Press Releases Trinity Biotech Signs Licence Agreement with Imperial College London Dublin, Ireland, November 18th 1996. Trinity Biotech plc (NASDAQ TRIBY) today announced that it has signed an exclusive option agreement with The Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London, for the commercial development of both rapid and laboratory based Hepatitis A tests. Imperial College, London, is one of the UK's leading medical research institutions. Imperial College have developed recombinant Hepatitis A antigens primarily for use in vaccines. Trinity has an exclusive option to these recombinant antigens to develop the world's first Hepatitis A recombinant test in laboratory and rapid test formats. Testing of blood samples for Hepatitis A is routinely carried out to distinguish Hepatitis A from other forms of viral Hepatitis and to determine the need for vaccination. All of the currently available commercial assays employ natural Hepatitis A antigen and tend to have high production costs, poor reproducibility and variable sensitivity and specificity. Recombinant antigen based products, because of their defined chemistry, tend to have higher margins and enhanced technical performance. Trinity plans to develop a Hepatitis A laboratory test utilising these new raw materials in order to access a current clinical laboratory market which is estimated at $150m per annum. Trinity will also develop a rapid Hepatitis A test for use in the doctor's office market. Trinity has identified a demand for a rapid Hepatitis A test due to the recent availability of a Hepatitis A vaccine. A large proportion (30% - 50%) of the population are naturally immune to Hepatitis A virus. Thus, with a rapid doctor's office test a doctor can distinguish between those with natural immunity and those that require a vaccination. Trinity's UniGold format is ideally suited for this application. Commenting on the announcement, Ronan O'Caoimh, CEO stated, "Trinity is delighted to have established links with such an important research institution as Imperial College. We confidently expect that the successful development of this product will generate significant revenues in both the current laboratory market for Hepatitis A and the new developing market for point-of-care Hepatitis A tests. Trinity has already had discussions with several multinational companies interested in OEM supply of this particular test and Trinity's already developed one-step Hepatitis B test. The agreement shows Trinity's continued ability to identify new markets for its rapid testing platform, UniGold, and our ability to identify suitable partners to help us develop these products". Trinity Biotech develops, manufactures and markets simple rapid diagnostic tests for the clinical lab, point-of-care and over-the-counter markets. |