Announcement no. 02

BioPorto sells NGAL license to major diagnostic company

Market-leading diagnostic player Instrumentation Laboratory has bought a license to BioPorto’s NGAL patents. The parties have entered into a non-exclusive agreement in which the broad economic terms include down payments totaling 2 million Euro divided into milestone payments plus a royalty rate of 5.5%. First payment is a signing fee of 250,000 Euro.

The agreement allows Instrumentation Laboratory to develop and market NGAL tests in all non-homogeneous test formats. BioPorto uses a homogeneous test format in its own recently launched The NGAL TestTM. BioPorto can enter into further agreements on license access to its NGAL patents.

The kidney biomarker NGAL

Every year about 13 million people are struck by acute kidney injury worldwide, of whom about 4 million die. Nevertheless, there has been no real progress in methods of diagnosing kidney injury over the last half century. Existing methods, such as serum creatinine determination, only signal kidney failure 24-72 hours after the injury has taken place. In contrast, NGAL rises to diagnostic levels within a few hours of kidney injury and thus enables the physician to make vital clinical decisions before the damage progresses to potentially fatal renal shutdown. In addition to helping the patient, cost-benefit analyses show that implementing NGAL testing will contribute to reducing hospital costs in the management of kidney injury and its consequences.

BioPorto’s NGAL IPR

BioPorto has obtained patent rights within the NGAL area, in which the BioPorto’s “cutoff” patent occupies a central position. This patent covers the cutoff or threshold level above which NGAL indicates acute kidney injury, and a higher cutoff indicating an impending dialysis requirement. The NGAL “exclusion” patent application is complementary to the cutoff patent and concerns lower values of NGAL that exclude an immediate risk of kidney damage. The NGAL patents allow BioPorto both to secure the placement of its own products and enforce its rights in relation to competitors, if these should sell NGAL tests for the diagnosis of acute kidney injury without license access to the patents.

Instrumentation Laboratory

Instrumentation Laboratory was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, USA. It is a market leader in diagnostic instruments for critical care and hemostasis. Instrumentation Laboratory is an integral part of the Werfen Group, a privately owned international healthcare corporation comprising a group of leading manufacturing and distribution companies. The group is active worldwide in the areas of in-vitro diagnostics, medical devices for hospitals and scientific instruments for industry and research.