kantaro-and-atrys-health-partnership-expand-global-footprint-of-quantitative-covid-19-antibody-tests-in-europe-and-south-america

Kantaro and Atrys Health Partnership Expand Global Footprint of Quantitative COVID-19 Antibody Tests in Europe and South America

 

Kantaro Biosciences, LLC, a joint venture between the Mount Sinai Health System and RenalytixAI (LSE:RENX / NASDAQ: RNLX), and manufacturing partner Bio-Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH), entered into a marketing and distribution agreement with Atrys Health (BME: ATRY), a biomedical company dedicated to providing diagnostic services and medical treatments of excellence. Atrys Health will offer COVID-SeroKlir and COVID-SeroIndex, Kantaro’s quantitative SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody test kits, in select European and South American territories, including SpainPortugalColombiaBrazilPeru and Chile.

The Kantaro tests have received a CE Mark for detecting the presence and precise level of neutralizing IgG antibodies that are produced as part of the immune response to COVID-19 virus exposure. The Kantaro tests are also the first and only quantitative antibody tests that do not require proprietary equipment, meaning they can be run easily in any approved clinical laboratory. Quantitative testing for neutralizing antibodies can inform healthcare decision-making and public health policies worldwide.

“Atrys Health is the latest in a growing list of high-quality distribution partners. This agreement represents another critical step forward in bringing the Kantaro quantitative antibody tests to doctors, patients and researchers in regions affected by COVID-19,” said Sara Barrington, Kantaro’s chief commercial officer. “We believe this type of antibody testing is increasingly relevant at this point in the pandemic to provide peace of mind and answer important questions about vaccine response, longevity and immunity.”

Isabel Lozano, CEO of Atrys Health, said: “Our partnership with Kantaro diversifies and widens our portfolio of diagnostics at the forefront of innovation. We humbly embrace the opportunity to make the Kantaro quantitative antibody tests available to our customers in Europe and South America and be part of the global effort to increase testing and begin to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

COVID-SeroKlir and COVID-SeroIndex are enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) that have demonstrated 97.8% sensitivity and 99.6% specificity for detecting COVID-19 IgG antibodies, making them highly accurate with low potential for false results. The high precision results from a two-step process that utilizes two virus antigens: the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and the full-length spike protein.

The underlying technology in the Kantaro quantitative antibody test is based on research performed at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. The Mount Sinai technology has already been used in a highly diverse population of over 86,000 patient samples to screen for convalescent plasma donors and determine past infections in the clinical assessment of potentially life-threatening complications from COVID-19, including lung, kidney and cardiovascular disease. This technology has been utilized extensively in peer-reviewed research published in Science and Nature.