Immunodiagnostic Systems (IDH:AIM) stock jumped 67% to 350p on Friday after announcing that a Covid-19 antibody test that it has been developing is expected to be ready for sale by the end of June.
Immunodiagnostic, an in-vitro diagnostics (taking tissue or blood samples from the body) specialist, said the test detects any past exposure to the virus, and produced an immune system response.
MORE THAN YES/NO
The company claims that unlike many other available tests, its test can determine the concentration of antibodies built-up rather than just giving a simple yes or no result. In addition the results will become available within 25 minutes.
‘We are pleased that our collaboration with Technogenetics has achieved the important milestone of CE-marking a quantitative, fully automated SARS-CoV-2 antibody test running on the IDS-iSYS analyser,’ said chief executive Haap Stuut.
The company claims the test meets the criteria specified by health authorities and is ‘highly accurate with a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 99.4%.
Sensitivity measures how often a test correctly generates a positive result, also known as the true positive rate. Specificity measures a test’s ability to correctly generate a negative result for people who haven't had the virus.
ELIMINATING FALSE NEGATIVES
These statistics mean the test will identify all people who have had the virus correctly and not give a so-called false negative. However 0.6% of people who tested negative will in fact have the virus. This aspect of antibody testing has been most troublesome part of the search for a reliable test.
The firm also said that although the level of immunity conferred by having antibodies has not yet been clinically determined, it ‘believes quantitative tests may ultimately be valuable in determining immunity status based on the levels of antibody in the blood.’
All steps of testing are automated requiring no manual preparation, ensuring the prospect of a high daily throughput. The IDS-iSYS analysers are already installed in over six hundred laboratories worldwide including many NHS hospitals.
