Seraph Biosciences Inc. in Detroit has entered into a development, commercialization, and exclusive distribution agreement with Ann Arbor’s Zomedica Pharmaceuticals Corp., Zomedica announced Thursday.
Zomedica is a veterinary diagnostic and pharmaceutical company, and Seraph is a human biomedical device company. Under the terms of the agreement, Zomedica will have exclusive global veterinary industry rights to develop and market a new pathogen detection system in the form of a point-of-care diagnostic instrument.
“Our agreement with Seraph is another milestone in our efforts to bring cutting-edge innovations to veterinary practices,” says Gerald Solensky Jr., CEO of Zomedica. “We chose to partner with Seraph because we believe that their platform will enable us to bring the best of human market technology to the in-house veterinary diagnostic lab bench, elevating the standard of care, enhancing practice workflow, and driving practice profitability.”
The two companies are partnering to bring human diagnostic technology to veterinarians, beginning with the examination of urine and fecal samples. Zomedica’s diagnostic instrument, called the ZM-020, is expected to increase speed of results and enhance workflow with minimal sample preparation time. Zomedica’s development work will also seek to expand the capabilities of in-clinic testing to include genus- and species-level information, on top of pathogen detection.
“We believe that ZM-020 will enable us to make a significant improvement to the diagnostic workflow of the veterinary clinic,” said Stephanie Morley, COO and vice president of product development for Zomedica. “If we are successful in our development efforts, we believe that the ability to screen for a wide variety of pathogens with a single diagnostic instrument, beginning with urine and fecal samples, will be a game changer for the modern veterinary clinical team.”
Zomedica will develop and validate the device, while Seraph will supply Zomedica with the hardware platform, associated software, and consumables to be developed under the agreement. Zomedica will be responsible for the marketing and sales, which are expected to begin in 2019 with an initial focus on dogs. The companies expect to expand to cat applications post launch.
The agreement has a term of seven years and automatically renews for additional one-year terms thereafter.
