AcouSort and Pharmacolog sign letter of intent to investigate integration of AcouSort’s blood separation technology

AcouSort AB and Uppsala-based Pharmacolog AB has signed a letter of intent concerning a long-term collaboration focused on investigating the potential of integrating AcouSort’s technology in Pharmacolog’s products. The aim is that the collaboration will result in the development of a novel product for determination of antibiotic concentration in blood from critically ill patients.

During early spring, AcouSort has performed proof-of-principle studies together with Pharmacolog. The goal has been to investigate if AcouSort’s technology for blood-plasma separation is suitable for combination with Pharmacolog’s measurement technology, to enable direct measurement of antibiotic concentration in blood samples. The preliminary results have been very positive, showing that the plasma generated by AcouSort’s acoustic separation technology provides a better and more stable sample quality compared to other methods. This is crucial for the accuracy of Pharmacolog’s analytical technology.  

The two companies will now work together to potentially adapt and integrate the AcouPlasma technology into Pharmacolog’s future device for determining antibiotic concentration in blood in a point-of-care environment.

We are very excited for this new collaboration and we see great potential in combining our core technology with Pharmacolog’s technology for spectrophotometric analysis of blood plasma samples to benefit severely ill patients. As shown in the initial studies, our technology provides superior quality plasma in an automated and integration-friendly way. More and more life science companies are discovering that our technology can solve some of their core problems, allowing them to develop next generation of point-of-care devices and analytical instruments. This has been our vision all along, and it’s very exciting to see this development, says AcouSort’s CEO Torsten Freltoft.

Pharmacolog has during the last two years led a development project together with the institution for surgical sciences and the institution for medical sciences at Uppsala University. The project concerns the development of methods and technology for point-of-care measurements of antibiotic concentration in blood from patients undergoing treatment for severe infections. Pharmacolog’s measurement technology requires access to blood plasma. By using AcouSort’s technology, blood-plasma separation can be integrated directly into a point-of-care device. With AcouSort’s technology, manual handling steps are minimized and the output plasma samples are of higher quality compared to the standard centrifugation method.

What AcouSort has developed is somewhat revolutionizing: Automatically fractionating the different components of blood using ultrasound. After evaluating quite a few different and relatively complicated separation methods, it was very satisfying to observe how smooth our specifications were met using AcouSort’s separation technology. We are now planning to accelerate the development work for our antibiotics testing project and even increase the number of clinical partners, says Pharmacolog’s CEO Mats Högberg.

For further information on AcouSort, please contact:

Torsten Freltoft, CEO
Telephone: +45 2045 0854
E-mail: torsten.freltoft@acousort.com

About AcouSort

AcouSort AB (corporate registration number 556824-1037) is an innovative technology company focusing on developing products and solutions for integrated preparation of biological samples. With the help of sound waves, the company’s products can separate blood cells, concentrate, purify and stain cells, exosomes and bacteria from biological samples. The technology of the company’s products is acoustofluidics, where sound waves and microfluidics enable automated handling of samples in a range of application areas, from research on new biomarkers to the development of new diagnostic systems for near-patient testing – so-called Point-of Care (POC) systems. The company’s commercialization strategy is based on the already proven business model of providing separation modules to diagnostic system manufacturers for integrated sample preparation as well as to continue the commercialization of the company’s research instruments. With the help of the company’s products and development of point-of-care tests, new diagnostic systems and treatments are enabled, addressing some of the most challenging disease areas of our time: cancer, infectious diseases and cardiovascular diseases.