Oxford, UK; 04 April 2007 – Oxford Immunotec Ltd, the T cell measurement company, today announces that:
Oxford Immunotec develops and sells clinical diagnostic products based on its patented T-SPOT® technology, the first regulatory approved method for directly quantifying antigen-specific T cells.
T-SPOT is a simple and extremely accurate method of studying a person’s cellular immune response to infection. The patent licenced by sanofi pasteur covers the T-SPOT technology developed by Oxford Immunotec to measure antigen-specific effector T cells by detecting cytokine release in vitro using the ELISPOT immunoassay technique. Under the terms of the agreement, sanofi pasteur will have access to the technology under licence in its vaccine programmes. On the other hand, the parties have agreed to settle their patent disputes. Financial terms for the licence were not disclosed.
Commenting on the successful outcome, Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Immunotec said, “We are delighted that the uncertainty caused by sanofi pasteur’s opposition to our granted patent has now been fully resolved. We continue to believe that the Company’s broad intellectual property estate is a major asset that underpins the wider value of the T-SPOT diagnostic platform, both for the Company’s first marketed product, T-SPOT.TB for diagnosing TB and in developing diagnostic products for other disease indications.”
