Abingdon Health strengthens medical diagnostics base

Abingdon Health has acquired a controlling 80% interest in Forsite Diagnostics, a private UK-based contract developer and manufacturer of lateral flow diagnostic products. The Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) will remain shareholders of Forsite.

Forsite, co-located with Fera at the Sand Hutton Innovation Campus, York, was spun-out from DEFRA in 2007; its strong and diverse customer base includes European regulatory authorities, multi-national diagnostic and food companies. The company’s manufacturing facility has the capacity to produce many millions of lateral flow tests per annum.

Chris Hand, CEO of Abingdon Health said that the acquisition represented “another important step towards our strategy of creating a fully integrated, medical diagnostics business. Forsite brings an established customer base and a manufacturing infrastructure, which will enable us to produce our own diagnostic products.

“Abingdon now has the ability to develop, manufacture and sell a wide spectrum of diagnostic reagents and kits. This includes the synthesis of relevant peptides and production of antibodies as well as integrated medical diagnostic reagent-instrument systems.

“We continue to look for other appropriate opportunities to strengthen our business and provide Abingdon with the critical mass to enable it to exploit opportunities within the US$11.2bn global immunodiagnostics market. We would like to thank our shareholders for supporting this acquisition.”

Abingdon recently acquire a 50.1% share in Imperial Innovations Group’s portfolio company Molecular Vision which specialises in low cost POC tests.