Sage-N Research signs microbial identification agreement

Sage-N Research has signed an exclusive agreement with the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) to license technology for microbial identification.

This licence allows the integration of ECBC’s Agents of Biological Organs Identification (ABOID) system into the company’s existing Sorcerer proteomics platform, enabling rapid and sensitive detection and identification of pathogenic microorganisms in fluid media. Currently, the ABOID system can identify 4500 different bacteria, viruses and fungi.

“This cutting-edge technology enables identification of microorganisms down to strain level in minutes, rather than hours,” said ECBC Senior Scientist Charles Wick, PhD. “This proves very successful for infectious disease identification and a range of other potential applications in military, medical, pharmaceutical, food and public safety areas.”

The new platform will use the computational power of Sage-N Research’s Sorcerer and mass spectrometry-based proteomics to identify bacteria, viruses, fungi and other cellular material without the need for growing cultures, or any prior knowledge about them.

In addition, Ali Pervez, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Sage-N Research, comments: “Proteomics is a rapidly emerging field, and proteomics will play a key role in life science and medical research over the next five years. We are excited to use our core expertise to bring the power of this cutting-edge technology and our Sorcerer platform to a wider audience including infectious diseases, clinical, environmental and food testing markets.”