Cytiva has launched a new service for diagnostic developers and will establish new labs to meet the future needs of the industry. Cytiva Diagnostic Services will help developers bring point-of-care diagnostic tests to market quicker through infrastructure, expertise and consultation for point of care immunoassay development. A multi-million dollar investment will be used partly to expand chemistry labs in Cardiff, Wales as well as establishing design labs in Germany and China.

Cytiva has had a critical role working with diagnostic developers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, over 50 million people have been PCR tested using components or services from Cytiva. Diagnostic components, such as nitrocellulose membranes, are used in 18 immunoassay-based COVID-19 tests available today.

Investment in its molecular diagnostic component lab in Wales means more work with companies such as genedrive, a molecular diagnostics company. David Budd, CEO genedrive says, "Our R&D teams worked effectively together in combining their expertise, experience, and technologies to deliver innovative PCR Kits based on Cytiva's 'Ready-to-Go' formulations. The speed at which we were able to move together was facilitated by many previous years of cooperative working."

The new services will follow the same collaborative approach as Cytiva's work with Avacta. The companies are co-developing a rapid antigen test strip for COVID-19 to provide a result in minutes using patient saliva.

Alastair Smith, CEO of Avacta, comments: "Cytiva has been a key partner in developing a rapid coronavirus antigen test, and we continue to work closely with them, and our manufacturing partners, to finalise the test in a format suitable for massively scaled-up manufacturing processes to meet the anticipated demand."

The new services will include training, test optimization expertise and contract development and can be hosted virtually or in-person at Cytiva's new lab in Dassel, Germany. Another lab for diagnostics development work is being planned for China in 2021. These projects form part of Cytiva's 500 million USD investment over five years to expand manufacturing capacity.

Emmanuel Abate, Vice President, Genomics and Cellular Research at Cytiva, says: "We have seen a lot of new companies entering the field this year to address the challenges of the pandemic. As a diagnostic component provider with over 30 years' experience, we have a key role supporting the industry through the next series of challenges with our manufacturing and design expertise."