Link Technologies has announced a license deal with the University of Manchester Intellectual Property Limited (UMIP) to manufacture and sell highly sensitive exciplex-based diagnostic reagents.
The university's exciplex technology is claimed to offer ultra-biospecificity and increased detection sensitivity over conventional systems due to negligible background signal.
This license marks the start of a forward collaboration between Link and the university to develop the existing technology.
Honorary Prof Ken Douglas and Dr Elena Bichenkova, a senior lecturer in medicinal chemistry at the University of Manchester, have developed new exciplex diagnostic probes based on labelling oligonucleotides with exciplex partners that form excited-state complexes in close spatial proximity.
Application of these modified oligonucleotides in diagnostic systems has been shown to discriminate DNA mutations at the level of PCR products and plasmid DNA.
Link Technologies has also secured the rights to any intellectual property arising from the collaboration with the university.
