Oxford Nanopore Technologies has teamed up with Cepheid to speed up infectious disease genomic analysis, blocking out recent noise of acquisition vulnerability.
The UK biotech, a former star of the London initial public offering (IPO) scene, said the strategic collaboration will help return genomic results of bacterial and fungal pathogens within hours, compared to days experienced with currently available technology.
Shares in London-listed Nanopore opened 6% higher at market open on 10 April compared to market open on 9 April, the day the announcement was made.
Nanopore and US-based Cepheid have already completed a proof-of-concept study that saw the two companies’ technologies combined for infectious disease analysis. The new research uses only workflow now sees Cepheid's cartridge-based GeneXpert system used Oxford Nanopore's sequencing platform.
Nanopore was spun out of Oxford University in 2005 with pioneering technology for sequencing nucleic acids on handheld devices. All the company’s sequencing devices work by analysing long DNA or RNA fragments by monitoring an electrical current as the nucleic acids are passed through a protein nanopore.
The collaboration with Cepheid – who sells the most widely installed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic instrument in the world – aims to create a scalable, automated, and end-to-end solution for simplified nanopore sequencing workflows. The analysis is intended for use within a range of settings, including labs lacking in expertise that would not have done in-house sequencing.
Profiling bacterial and fungal pathogens from culture isolates will be the first port of call for the partnership, with analysis directly from positive blood cultures also in the pipeline. There is also a potential expansion into further infectious disease use cases, such as cancer and human genetics, and eventually regulatory approved clinical diagnostics.
"This collaboration represents an important step forward in delivering new and improved workflow options to better understand infectious diseases," said Dr. Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
"By partnering to integrate our richer data, rapid insights, and accessible and affordable sequencing technology with Cepheid's GeneXpert architecture, we are establishing a workflow foundation that is positioned for future expansion into scaled routine clinical use."
Takeover concerns
The partnership with Cepheid comes nearly a month after Dr. Sanghera admitted to the Financial Times that the company had become a takeover target. Nanopore went public in 2021 on the back of surging sales for its sequencing devices in the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, it was seen as a major coup for the London stock market, with companies generally preferring to tap the more lucrative exchanges on Wall Street. However, sales dried up for the company as demand for pandemic-related products waned. Despite shares having fallen 85% from a 2021 speak, Nanopore still boasts a market cap just north of £1bn.
Other companies partnered with Nanopore include France-based bioMérieux, a biotech that increased its stake in the UK company via a $85m investment in late 2023. Like Cepheid, bioMérieux is working with Nanopore in infectious disease analysis – specifically developing a test for determining the antibiotic resistance of tuberculosis.
