Menarini Silicon Biosystems (MSB), the pioneer of liquid biopsy and rare cell technologies, announced today that it has entered into a strategic co-promotion partnership for its CELLSEARCH Circulating Endothelial Cell (CEC) Kit*, relevant to study progression of COVID-19 disease, and other COVID-19-related products, with OpGen, Inc. (Nasdaq: OPGN), a precision medicine company harnessing the power of molecular diagnostics and bioinformatics to help combat infectious disease.
Effective immediately, Menarini's CELLSEARCH system, CELLSEARCH CEC kit and COVID-19 related products will be marketed and sold by OpGen to infectious disease healthcare providers and researchers in North America through its dedicated team of sales and marketing experts.
The partnership will focus on promoting Menarini's CELLSEARCH system for CEC application, for the enrichment and enumeration of CEC from whole blood. CEC count is useful in studying the progression of COVID-19 and potentially in identifying patients at risk of developing more severe complications.
Both parties intend to expand the portfolio of COVID-19 products and platforms available over the coming months as they become available for sale. The OpGen commercial team will offer these products to its infectious disease contacts in hospitals, labs, research centers, along with distributors and other relevant stakeholders in the COVID-19 testing space.
"We are excited to partner with OpGen for the commercialization of our CELLSEARCH CEC Kit and our expanding portfolio of COVID-19 related products in the U.S. market," said Fabio Piazzalunga, President and CEO of Menarini Silicon Biosystems, Inc. "This deal further extends the strategic distribution partnership which Menarini has built over the past 15 months in eleven European markets for OpGen's subsidiary Curetis GmbH's Unyvero platform and forms another element of our strategic presence in the infectious disease diagnostics market."
"This commercial partnership further adds to the available portfolio of infectious disease tests that our OpGen sales and marketing team can bring to our network of customers in the U.S.," stated Oliver Schacht, CEO of OpGen. "With Menarini already being our exclusive strategic distribution partner in Europe since early 2019, we see this as a natural extension and expansion of our partnership at a global level."
"While MSB has traditionally focused on oncology molecular diagnostics we also have built a dedicated team of commercial experts in the U.S. in the infectious disease diagnostics market. Our team is excited to add several key products into their offering to bring a more complete solution to the COVID-19 pandemic situation," Mr. Schacht added.
About Menarini Silicon Biosystems
Menarini Silicon Biosystems offers unique rare cell technologies and solutions that provide clinical researchers with access to unparalleled resolution in the study of cells and their molecular characterization. The company's CELLSEARCH and DEPArray technologies together provide an end-to-end solution** for enumeration and sorting of rare cells with single-cell precision.
Menarini Silicon Biosystems, based in Bologna, Italy, and Huntingdon Valley, Pa., U.S., is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Menarini Group, a multinational pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics company headquartered in Florence, Italy, with 17,640 employees in 136 countries.
About OpGen, Inc.
OpGen, Inc. (Gaithersburg, MD, USA) is a precision medicine company harnessing the power of molecular diagnostics and bioinformatics to help combat infectious disease. Along with its subsidiaries, Curetis GmbH and Ares Genetics GmbH, OpGen is developing and commercializing molecular microbiology solutions helping to guide clinicians with more rapid and actionable information about life threatening infections to improve patient outcomes, and decrease the spread of infections caused by multidrug-resistant microorganisms, or MDROs. OpGen's product portfolio includes Unyvero, Acuitas AMR Gene Panel and Acuitas® Lighthouse, and the ARES Technology Platform including ARESdb, using NGS technology and AI-powered bioinformatics solutions for antibiotic response prediction.
For more information, please visit www.opgen.com.
