Contact: Clive Seymour, CEO, Canterbury Scientific Limited
cseymour@canterburyscientific.com
Medical Device Manufacturer, Canterbury Scientific Limited, Completes Investment into Aptatek BioSciences, Inc. Developing Advanced In-Home Monitoring of Chronic Disease
Christchurch, New Zealand – April 2022 – Canterbury Scientific Limited, a leading global developer and manufacturer of medical devices, announced it has completed its investment into Aptatek Biosciences, Inc., a developer of in-home health monitoring solutions for patients with chronic disease. The investment, coupled with an option to manufacture, has been confirmed upon completion of a US$4 million seed funding round led by hard science investment firm IP Group, Inc. and includes the National PKU Alliance (NPKUA).
The funding will fuel the development and clinical validation of the company’s first product that enables critical in-home monitoring of phenylketonuria (PKU). This rare inherited disorder causes the dangerous build-up of the amino acid phenylalanine in the body with very serious brain function impacts for new-borns and infants. Close monitoring of phenylalanine levels is a requirement for their entire lifetimes.
Today, diagnosis and monitoring of inborn diseases is costly, slow, and inaccessible to millions of people globally, as performed only in centralised laboratories. Currently, patients have no choice but to visit a hospital or mail-in blood samples to a central lab.
The investment will permit the company to develop and commercialise its unique platform with further potential applications in chronic kidney disease and medication management, where accurate and timely monitoring provide enormous health outcome benefits.
“With over 30 years’ experience developing and manufacturing controls and calibrators utilised by the majority of the world’s leading diagnostic companies, we have strong interest in expanding our presence in chronic disease management and through our investment group, CS Ventures, we continue to actively search for opportunities,” said Clive Seymour, CEO of Canterbury Scientific. “With this investment, we are delighted to support and help accelerate the opportunity to provide in-home solutions based on the Aptatek platform, to help transform disease management and change patients’ lives, a founding principle of our business.”
Aptatek CEO Dr. Michael Boyce-Jacino stated, “We are excited to have strong partners such as IP Group, Inc., who are committed to commercializing breakthrough technology in the hard sciences and Canterbury Scientific, a company focused on high quality product development and manufacturing, to support our product manufacturing and global reach. We are also honoured to have the support of the NPKUA in the important effort to enable patient empowerment in the management of PKU.”
Christine Brown, Executive Director of the NPKUA added, “Home Phe monitoring for PKU has been a long-time goal of the PKU patient community, and we are excited to support the Aptatek platform.
About Canterbury Scientific
For more than 30 years, Canterbury Scientific has been a leading, global OEM developer and supplier of high quality IVD Controls and Calibrators for diabetes and hemoglobinopathy applications. The Company has a global reputation for the highest quality controls and calibrators for QC of diabetes diagnosis and monitoring lab based and point-of-care (POC) analysis systems. The Company has continued to develop its specialist products to the requirements of its customers across a range of haemoglobin analysis methods including bulk and fully kitted formats.
Canterbury Scientific is certified to ISO 13485:2016 standards for Medical devices and complies to US FDA cGMP regulations, maintaining a number of FDA (510k) pre-market approvals and EU CE Marks. www.canterburyscientific.com / www.csventures.nz
About Aptatek BioSciences
A spinout from Columbia University, Aptatek BioSciences, Inc. is a point-of-care technology company with a unique, aptamer-based assay chemistry developing products for health testing in home settings. Aptatek’s monitoring device would be game-changing for thousands of people affected by PKU because it provides clinical-grade testing in an easy-to-use, home-based portable device.