Next Generation Clinical Diagnostic Systems
We sat in on presentations for two innovative clinical diagnostic companies that have platform products serving big potential markets. Although it may be early to buy these stocks now they should be on your watch list for the new product revenue ramp up.
Solutions For The Global Challenge of Drug Resistant Organisms
Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc. (AXDX) $23.50 Market Cap $1.09B. Accelerate is focused on developing and commercializing a diagnostic platform for rapid identification and antibiotic susceptibility (AST) of infectious pathogens directly from patient specimens. The breakthrough product takes advantage of major advances in imaging technology, computing capability and surface chemistry. The system will eliminate the time consuming steps of culturing and colony isolation resulting in a one hour molecular identification and a five hour AST. The market is expected to grow 20%/yr. from $2.2B to $7.5B. There are 1.4M hospital acquired infections in the U.S./yr.and 60% of hospital patients get antibiotics , half of which are inappropriate. Initial menu focus will be a respiratory panel, blood culture, urinary tract infection and soft tissue.
Genmark Diagnostics, Inc. (GNMK) $13.50 Market Cap $568M. Genmark is a molecular diagnostics company with proprietary eSensor technology in an XT-8 platform currently being sold and the next generation ePlex that will be launched in Europe in H1 2015 and the U.S. H1 2016. 540 XT-8 analyzers have been placed in the U.S. with Q4 revenues of $6.5M. 2015 revenues are forecasted at $38M. The market potential of the ePlex will be expanded from the current 1000 CLIA labs to 10,000, a $5B market because of simplicity of operation, 4-6 hour turnaround time and dozens of target molecules per sample. The eSensor DNA detection technology will offer greater sensitivity and specificity because of less interference compared to optical analytical systems.