Sensyne and Excalibur sign lateral flow diagnostics deal

Clinical AI company Sensyne Health has signed an exclusive licence and development agreement with Excalibur Healthcare Services to apply Sensyne’s MagnifEye system for use with Excalibur’s lateral flow rapid diagnostic tests across a range of indications including its COVID-19 antigen test currently being marketed in the UK and across Europe. 

The Excalibur COVID-19 antigen lateral flow diagnostic test has been approved by the UK regulator for mass population screening in symptomatic and asymptomatic people.

The MagnifEye system is Sensyne’s software application available as both a smartphone app and a web application, that uses a cloud-based deep learning algorithm to automate the reading and analysis of different diagnostic tests including lateral flow tests. The system has been adapted to Excalibur’s lateral flow Antigen test. The system trains users to administer a lateral flow test, then interpret that test and provide a shareable digital certificate that validates the training of the user, the test result and resulting health status. 

Excalibur will market the system alongside its current and future portfolio of lateral flow tests globally to customers in both the public and private sectors, with Sensyne acting as its clinical AI technology supplier, underpinning each new product. Excalibur will pay Sensyne a royalty each time the system is used to read a lateral flow test with a minimum guaranteed royalty sum of £4.8 million payable over the first two years of the agreement. The analytical capacity of the system at launch will match Excalibur’s current lateral flow test manufacturing capacity of approximately three million tests per day.

The initial focus will be on use of MagnifEye for COVID-19 antigen testing, followed by its potential application in new lateral flow diagnostic tests for serology, cancer and other disease conditions that Excalibur is currently developing. Beyond this agreement, Excalibur and Sensyne will seek to collaborate on the development of further projects that combine Excalibur’s expertise in the development and marketing of high-quality diagnostic tests with Sensyne’s expertise in the development and supply of software systems using clinical AI. 

Lord Drayson, CEO of Sensyne Health, said: “The combination of Sensyne’s clinical AI technology and Excalibur’s test will, we believe, provide the most accurate diagnostic lateral flow test available in the world today. This agreement reflects the UK’s leadership position and expertise in life science and data science and underlines Sensyne’s expertise in putting the AI inside a growing range of innovations. With increasing global demand for rapid, easy to use diagnostic testing across a range of conditions, this agreement has the potential to create significant value from this fast growing $6 billion market. Sir Chris’s team at Excalibur has been established for more than 20 years and we are delighted to be working with them.” 

Professor Sir Chris Evans, chairman and CEO of Excalibur Healthcare Services, added: “Through our laboratories in Cambridge, we have been working with Sensyne to optimise the application of MagnifEye with our rapid antigen COVID test. The combination has significantly increased the sensitivity of the test and we believe makes it the most advanced and accurate antigen lateral flow test in the worldwide market today. This is another triumph for UK science and technology.

“Whereas nearly all lateral flow antigen tests pick up viral loads at an approximate Ct 25 level as visually readable coloured bands, we have now dramatically increased the sensitivity of our test by over 50%, picking up positive results in the Ct range of 29-30, which are invisible to the naked eye. This increased sensitivity means our test can now detect positives across the entire range of infectious COVID viral loads.”