Horsham company develops rapid new test for coronavirus

OptiGene - which is based in Blatchford Road - is now hoping that its molecular test could be rapidly deployed by the NHS around the UK to significantly increase capacity to diagnose the virus.

The company says that 300 patient samples can be processed in an hour on a single instrument and it is now in talks with Public Health England on rolling out the tests.

It follows successful trials carried out by doctors at Basingstoke Hospital in Hampshire to validate the test.

Michael Andreou, managing director of OptiGene, which has operated from it base in Horsham for the past 12 years, said the test “takes less time to complete than any equivalent method currently in use.

“This specific and extremely sensitive test can operate directly from nasal and throat swabs to produce results in less than 20 minutes.

“Unlike the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test that has already been deployed for diagnosing the virus, the OptiGene procedure uses isothermal LAMP technology that does not require expensive and time-consuming RNA extraction and is inherently much faster than PCR.”

He added that the test “has now passed validation and is ready to be utilised.”

He said that Hampshire Hospitals NHS Trust were ‘on board with this’ and it was hoped Public Health England would start rolling out the new test to a number of hospital trusts before use by the NHS nationwide.

He said OptiGene - a joint venture with Horsham based company OptiSense and Camberley-based firm GeneSys - first began work on devising test equipment as soon as the virus DNA sequence data was released by the Chinese.

The new test is being run on a series of instruments, developed and manufactured by OptiSense in Horsham and is sold under the OptiGene brand and includes both portable battery-powered devices as well as a larger high-throughput model.

The company hopes that after furnishing Public Health England with further data, its test equipment could be in use by next week.

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