Avacta signs Far Eastern deal for Optim technology

DIAGNOSTICS specialist Avacta has signed a new distribution agreement for its Optim analysis device.

The deal with Cold Spring Biotech Corp will cover mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which Avacta said was a strategically important market for the company.

The York-based company, which was spun out of the University of Leeds, develops technology to speed up and reduce the cost of diagnosis.

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Optim has been developed to accelerate and reduce the cost of drug development by providing early analysis of compounds.

Avacta said Optim delivers vital information tens of times faster than rivals and uses samples that are one hundred times smaller. This allows drug developers to get an insight into drugs at a much earlier stage of development.

Avacta said this leads to a significant reduction in the likelihood of failure and reduces the overall costs of launching new drugs.

Cold Spring is a life sciences distribution company headquartered in Taiwan with offices in Taipei, Taichung, and Tainan and commercial operations throughout Hong Kong and mainland China, where it has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Wuhan.

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The Chinese biotech market is the fastest growing biotech market in the world and the Chinese government expects growth of 24.1 per cent between 2011 and 2015.

Alastair Smith, Avacta's chief executive, said: "We are delighted to have secured an agreement with a very well respected and well established Far Eastern distributor.

"Although, relatively speaking, China is still a developing biotech market, it is nevertheless ranked in the top five in the world for biotech innovation. Continued inward investment by the Chinese government is supporting this growth."

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